House of the Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories

by Yasunari Kawabata

Book Overview

From Japan's first Nobel laureate for literature, three superb stories exploring the interplay between erotic fantasy and reality in a loner's mind.

"He was not to do anything in bad taste, the woman of the house warned old Eguchi. He was not to put his finger into the mouth of the sleeping girl, or try anything else of that sort." With his promise to abide by the rules, Eguchi begins his life as a member of a secret club for elderly gentlemen...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 4770029756
• ISBN13: 9784770029751
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Kodansha
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.4" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

Love and Death

These strange and haunting stories of strange love are written with a disturbingly quiet and even hand. It's a genius read. Kawabata is the master of beautiful disaffection. His characters do not feel pain when you think they should, and one recoils, but is drawn back in to the stories. At the core of Kawabata's work is a pessimism about the value of life itself-even while the protagonists are involved in secret obsessions. Fascinating, beautifully written, haunting.

The terror of lust by the approach of death

Kawabata's magisterial short novel is a beautiful but sad reverie about life and death, young and old, sex and coming impotence. Sleeping with sleeping girls ('a deathlike sleep') was 'a fleeting consolation, the pursuit of a vanished happiness in being alive.' 'The sleeping beauties are for an old man the recovery of life, but also a sadness ... that called up a longing for death. The aged have death and the young have love, and death comes once, and love comes over and over again.' Kawabata's writing is subtle (the old man is tempted to breach the house rules) and intimistic (the descriptions of the ethereal bodies of the sleeping virgins). But, as the great Japanese writer Yukio Mishima expresses it perfectly in his introduction, this book is a pregnant reflection on 'the terror of lust by the approach of death.' A masterpiece.

3 Stories, 1 Theme - The loneliness and desires of old age

"House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories" contains three variations on the same theme, encompassing the soul-sick loneliness of old age, and the longing for ideal companionship, one with no judgments or confrontation, but merely peace and the contentment that comes from loving someone. According to Kawabata, this longing increases with age, and one romances ghosts from the past, using the present to conjure up their memories from the depths of a forgetting mind. The leading story, "House of the Sleeping Beauties," is among the best, most powerful Kawabata stories I have ever read. It shows an author in full command of his style, able to arouse a startling depth of emotion using a limited palette of words and scenery. The story is simple in conception, disturbingly erotic in nature, and stunning in execution. An old woman runs a brothel for impotent old men, housing unnaturally sleeping virgins who have no performance expectations of the old man, nor incriminations for their inabilities. The old men may lie with them, hold them and drink in their youth and beauty free from the hard reality of their own impotence. The sleeping girls will never know who was with them, or what was done. The only forbidden act is sex. The story is pure eros without sex, the desire of the impotent. The leading figure in the tale, Eguchi is "still able to function as a man," unbeknownst to the brothel keeper. He knows what it is to desire more than the girls are willing to give, and the tension between his desires, the rules of the house, and the depressing reality of Eguchi's future impotence combine and take form under Kawabata's guiding hand. With each girl he sleeps next to, Eguchi wanders through his memories, remembering his youth and the girls he shared it with. Such a story can only come to one ending, and reality comes crashing into his fantasy. A stark and gripping tale. The remaining stories, "One Arm" and "Of Birds and Beasts," suffer in the aftermath of the powerful "House of the Sleeping Beauties." "One Arm" in particular is a disappointment, perhaps due to its too-surreal situation, and an old man who borrows a young woman's arm (given quite willingly) then proceeds to romance and fall in love with the limb. As with "House of the Sleeping Beauties," this is eros without sex, desire without lust, but it lacks the honesty and fantasy/reality blend that makes the former story so strong. "Of Birds and Beasts" is good enough, and a better story than "One Arm." Completely lacking in eroticism, this is another tale of an old man who seeks companionship, this time in all sorts of dogs and birds. His house is full with his menagerie, and he and his lone maid tend to the creatures with something less than love. Each new animal holds his attention for a few weeks at most, before it is filed away and forgotten in the background. Like "House of the Sleeping Beauties," each new animal summons up memories, this time of the birds that th

A thinker person's collection of short stories

Every time I enter the realm of magical realism I feel as though there's no going back. The intense and sometimes disturbing descriptions in the stories make you think and reflect on the surrealism and powerful message behind the writing. Having read House of the Sleeping Beauties, I realize that no other category of literature is as profound as this one. I love all of the stories in this book, especially "One Arm." This incredible and strange story awed me. There is a recurring theme in the stories: men's perverse obsession with women, particularly young girls. The message is very ambiguous, which means that you have to read between the lines in order to grasp the meaning. Yasunari Kawabata's work is very similar to Banana Yoshimoto's. These Japanese authors write stories filled with interesting language and mystical messages. I strongly suggest that you read this!

Quietly chilling portrayal of loneliness

In three short stories, Kawabata creates a world that is chilling, uniquely lonely and undoubtedly beautiful. He makes bizarre possibilities (parting with an arm for the night, for instance) seem part of the flow of normal life - outliers, perhaps, but part of the usual. Each story makes ones ears buzz and eyes widen. Masterpieces all.