The author attempts to analyse how madness is aestheticized and poeticized in the late novellas by Higuchi Ichiyō (1872-1896). While referring to the concept of illness as a metaphor as developed by Susan Sontag and applied to the Japanese context by Karatani Kōjin, the author elaborates on the evocative and symbolic images of madness in Ichiyō’s works. The possible correspondences between the analyzed metaphors and the discourse of modernity in Meiji Japan are also considered Higuchi.