Measuring Heights

In the streets beside Tokyo’s Yoshiwara quarter, children form rival groups, spend pocket money, trade insults, and discover feelings they cannot easily name. Midori, Shōta, and Shinnyo inhabit the same small neighborhood, yet the lives prepared for them lead in different directions.

Higuchi Ichiyō’s Measuring Heights (Takekurabe) moves from the noise of childhood games toward the silences of growing older. Small gestures—an offered cloth, an averted face, a flower—carry meanings the characters struggle to speak.

This complete new translation follows the documented April 1896 lifetime witness, preserving the work’s sixteen sections and its unresolved implications. It includes a translator’s note, explanatory endnotes, and source information.