, translated by Edward Seidensticker

Edward Seidensticker

Edward George Seidensticker was a noted scholar and translator of Japanese literature. He was particularly known for his English version of The Tale of Genji , which is counted among the preferred modern translations...

 as Growing Up and by Robert Danly as Child's Play, is a Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 novella

Novella

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

 written by Higuchi Ichiyō

Higuchi Ichiyo

is the pen name of Japanese author , also known as .Higuchi was born in Meiji era Tokyo of samurai lineage. In the space of her short life, she moved a total of 12 times. Upon reaching the age of 14, she entered the Haginoya, a poetry school and received a classical education; at the age of 15,...

 in 1895-96.
The main characters are children living on the edge of Yoshiwara

Yoshiwara

Yoshiwara was a famous Akasen district in Edo, present-day Tōkyō, Japan.In the early 17th century, there was widespread male and female prostitution throughout the cities of Kyoto, Edo, and Osaka. To counter this, an order of Tokugawa Hidetada of the Tokugawa shogunate restricted prostitution to...

, the only district of Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 (later Tokyo) that was licensed for prostitution. As they grow up, they find themselves assuming their family professions and losing the freedom they enjoyed as children.

Film adaptations based on the novella include:

• Takekurabe (1924 film)
• Takekurabe (1955 film)
  Takekurabe (1955 film)
  , English titles include: Adolescence, Growing Up Twice, Growing Up, and Child's Play, is a 1955 black-and-white Japanese film directed by Heinosuke Gosho.It is a film adaptation of Higuchi Ichiyō's 1895-1896 novel Takekurabe....
  
  

There is an animated adaptation that was released in North America by Central Park Media

Central Park Media

Central Park Media was an American multimedia entertainment company based in New York City, New York, that was active in the distribution of East Asian cinema, television series, anime, manga and manhwa titles in North America prior to its bankruptcy in 2009...

; it was titled Growing Up in the English release.