House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

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House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker (Translator), Yukio Mishima (Introduction)

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 1,371 ratings · 82 reviews

Nobel prize-winning author Yasunari Kawabata is noted for his combination of a traditional Japanese aesthetic with modernist, often surreal trends. In these three tales, superbly translated by Edward Seidensticker, erotic fantasy is underlaid with longing and memories of past loves.

In the title story, the protagonist visits a brothel where elderly men spend a chaste but le

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Paperback, 148 pages

Published February 6th 2004 by Kodansha (first published 1961)

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Mar 27, 2011 Mariel rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: get real get right

Recommended to Mariel by: award giving peoples

I read House of the Sleeping Beauties with a knife in back. It freaking betrayed to me too much feelings. And... yeah!

I didn't read in order. The book jacket flap said: "The protagonist of Birds and Beasts prefers the company of his pet birds and dogs to people, yet for him all living beings are beautiful objects which, though they give him pleasure, he treats with casual cruelty." For me! Skip to story #3.

Birds and Beasts

Casual cruelty isn't precisely right. Playing god is more like it. They...more

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Feb 07, 2013 David Ireland rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: big-red-circle

I loved the pictures! Does everyone's edition have the great pictures?

Interesting from Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima:
"That fall (1962) Mishima edited a 'Kawabata reader' ... In the threesome talk he had with the author and Nakamura Mitsuo to be included in the project, he started by bringing up Kawabata's stories the writer himself was known to dislike '(Of) Birds and Beasts' and '(House of the) Sleeping Beauties', expressing his special fondness for them.
'(Of) Birds and Beasts' deals wi...more I loved the pictures! Does everyone's edition have the great pictures?

Interesting from Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima:
"That fall (1962) Mishima edited a 'Kawabata reader' ... In the threesome talk he had with the author and Nakamura Mitsuo to be included in the project, he started by bringing up Kawabata's stories the writer himself was known to dislike '(Of) Birds and Beasts' and '(House of the) Sleeping Beauties', expressing his special fondness for them.
'(Of) Birds and Beasts' deals with the protagonist's preference of pets ... over humans and with his realization, which he comes to accept, that animal lovers, so called, necessarily perpetrate cruelties on animals. In his 1955 essay Mishima had chosen it amongst Kawabata's 'best three,' asserting that with this 1933 story Kawabata became 'a tragedian' who would 'ceaselessly explore the blind life force in amorality like that of the behaviour of birds and beasts.'
'(House of the) Sleeping Beauties' describes a secret house of sexual entertainment where old men of means, mostly impotent, pay to lie by one or two young naked girls drugged to sleep all night, on the understanding that no touching is allowed. Mishima called the novella 'the apex of decadence' and 'the lowest depths of beauty' when he was asked for an essay ... to go with the complete works of Kawabata. When Shinchosha published the story along with two others in a paperback edition ... Mishima brought up Edward Seidensticker as the only person, aside from himself, who called it 'an indisputable masterpiece,' even though, he added their views of literature were 'as different as summer and winter'.
'Where in ordinary novelistic techniques, dynamic differentiations of personalities are made through conversation and action, this work, on account of its essential nature, differentiates six young women by employing extremely difficult, extremely ironic techniques,' Mishima was unstinting in his praise. 'Because the six are asleep and remain mum, it leaves no physical depictions, other than those of various bodily movements and mumblings in sleep. Its persistent, detailed, necrophilic physical depictions, you may say, are at the apex of the idealistic lechery. Yet the work as a whole is palpably oppressive, because revulsion is always woven into this sexual fantasy, and also, because the adoration of life is always mixed with a denial of life.'
In the threesome talk, Kawabata recognized that underlying some of his stories was 'self-revulsion, self-denial,' saying that he was 'embarrassed' about '(House of the) Sleeping Beauties'. Yes, he said, when he wrote '(Of) Birds and Beasts' he had many birds, such as a shrike and an owl – the reader may marvel at the lively, graphic description of an owl at feeding time – and several dogs. He also said he had meant '(House of the)Sleeping Beauties' to be complete with what later became Part 1, but his Shincho editor asked him to continue so as to make it long enough to make a book, hence a novella of five parts. This revelation delighted Mishima.
Yet all this could have entailed a dose of duplicity on the part of everyone involved ... (Mishima) had written much – how much reamins unknown – of '(House of the) Sleeping Beauties'"

... that said ... I think I liked 'One Arm' best of all.(less)

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Mar 13, 2012 ياسر حارب rated it 4 of 5 stars

كتاب جميل يغوص في داخل النفس البشرية ويطرح تساؤلات حول رغبات الحياة ولا يخشى من إعطاء أجوبة غير مقنعة. فأحيانا تكون هذه الأجوبة السخيفة هي الأجوبة الصحيحة. ما أعجبني هنا هو أن الكاتب قد وظّف الجنس بطريقة راقية، ولم يبتذل فيه ولم يتجاوز حد الأدب، وأتمنى ممن يستخدمون الجنس في أعمالهم أن يقتدوا به.
استطاع الكاتب أن يُشرّح عقلية من اقترب من الموت ولكن قلبه ما زال ينبض بالحياة، وتمكن من نقل شاب في سنّي ليعيش حالة رجل في آخر الستين من عمره.. يااااه.. أتساءلُ الآن كيف سيكون حالي حينها؟
شكرا لكواباتا

A ver...more

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Feb 08, 2012 sevda n. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

погълна ме буквално с първото изречение и когато решавам да си взема почивка за чаша чай + goodreads update за жалост някакво случайно ревю в сайта на Хеликон ми разказва без предупреждение края, което ме кара да изпитам известен яд към автора :)
~
и повестта, и разказа страхотно много ми харесаха.
още с първите изречения на повестта получаваме ключ към един таен и скрит свят. в него всяко нещо има своето пълно отрицание: старостта на главния герой и младите приспани момичета, с които се среща; сп...more погълна ме буквално с първото изречение и когато решавам да си взема почивка за чаша чай + goodreads update за жалост някакво случайно ревю в сайта на Хеликон ми разказва без предупреждение края, което ме кара да изпитам известен яд към автора :)
~
и повестта, и разказа страхотно много ми харесаха.
още с първите изречения на повестта получаваме ключ към един таен и скрит свят. в него всяко нещо има своето пълно отрицание: старостта на главния герой и младите приспани момичета, с които се среща; спомените и опитът да остане в настоящето, нежеланието да заспива; нежността му и мислите за насилие; топлината и студа, и изкусителката и девственицата, живеещи в едно тяло, и еротиката в текста и липсата й, и живота и смъртта. кой умира и кой живее, кой е приспан и кой е буден обаче не успяваме да разберем. вероятно в това е красотата.

единствената ми критика е, че искам още да чета. авторът е първият японец, получил нобелова награда, което изобщо не може да се разбере по количеството издадени на български негови книги (три, само една от които издадена след 83г.)

Книгата е на буккросинг лавицата ни http://liikk.wordpress.com/2012/01/23...(less)

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Oct 04, 2009 Evan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: yearning, asia, 2009-reads, kawabata, lolita-ya-ya, age-gap

More taboo erotic sex stuff in the vein of what I've been reading lately. Same guy who wrote "The Lake." Do not put your finger in the mouth of the sleeping girl, the madame warns him. Hmmm.

Well this first tale is quite meticulous in setting the scene, puts a microscope on delicate actions and physical traits. The story, if you can call it that, is a strange one about a prostitution house that caters to impotent old men who pay to sleep and have their ways with young naked girls who've been drug...more More taboo erotic sex stuff in the vein of what I've been reading lately. Same guy who wrote "The Lake." Do not put your finger in the mouth of the sleeping girl, the madame warns him. Hmmm.

Well this first tale is quite meticulous in setting the scene, puts a microscope on delicate actions and physical traits. The story, if you can call it that, is a strange one about a prostitution house that caters to impotent old men who pay to sleep and have their ways with young naked girls who've been drugged unconscious (I kid you not). Except the 67-year protagonist of this tale can still get it up. He's tempted to break house rules that say you can't awaken the sleeping girls (eg, screw them), because they're put to sleep so as not to frighten the girls at the presence of the hideous old men and to make the men not feel that rejection. And for the most part, all that the men can do is touch the girls' hair and bodies, or just literally sleep with them. Clientele are provided with sleeping pills themselves. This is probably giving too much away, but I haven't read all of it yet, so this is where I'll leave it. It's another reflection on aging, not dissimilar to GG Marquez's "Memories of my Melancholy Whores" or Kawabata's "The Lake." Memories of past loves drift in and out of the mix...

OK, um, as well written as the first story is, it is, to be honest, trying my patience a lot. It's very short and yet it seems like it's taking me longer to read than War and Peace. Old guy looks at girls' faces, plays with hair, takes sleeping pills, wakes up, sleeps with other girls, remarks on her physical features, plays with hair, cups breasts, takes sleeping pill, falls asleep, remembers other girls, smells evoke other women. It's lovely and poetic, for awhile, but it rambles repetitiously. The framing material, eg. the sleeping beauties, doesn't seem varied enough to convincingly evoke different memories of the past. It seems a bit distended for what it is.

Well...on the other hand...

Still making my way slowly through "Sleeping Beauties..." Oddly it seems better if you put it down awhile and come back to it. There's a dreamlike quality to it. It is quite lovely, really; very sad. The jealousy and envy of the old for the young. This is a strange story and a unique way of reflecting on memory and desire. I think in some ways I wish it were actually more prurient, but Kawabata shows restraint. He's more interested in the exquisite nature of human frailty. Gotta hand it to him...

OK, "Sleeping Beauties" had kind of an ironic twist ending which was cool. It took a long time to read it, but I'm glad I did.

The second story, "One Arm," is truly bizarre. A woman gives a man her arm---takes it right off herself, and it's not artificial---and he takes it home and sleeps with it, caressing it, etc. It speaks to him sort of telepathically. This is Cronenberg-esque. It evokes various memories, much like the sleeping beauties did in the first story. Hmmm. I think they call this magical realism, which I don't tend to like. But....

Closure:
OK, well I was reading this last Feb. and March and failed to become engaged by the third story, "Of Birds and Beasts." So, I tackled the longest main piece, which was good, and the second story, of which I was not especially enamored. I got partway into the third and just hazed out. I think I'm going to cut my losses here and move on. The library book has been sitting in my house all year... It's not my manner to mark a partially read book as "read," but it happens sometimes and there's just too much else to read.

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Apr 26, 2007 Melissa rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: thenovella

A very strange, almost dream-like novella, which details Eguchi's four visits to the House of Sleeping Beauties. At this house, elderly men pay for the privilege of sleeping beside young girls who have been giving very powerful sleeping pills. Though Eguchi frequently contemplates performing violence upon these sleeping girls, he never goes beyond pulling on their hair. Each girl who he sleeps beside conjures up old memories--of his former affairs, his children, and grandchildren. The memories a...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Patrick McCoy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-literature

Yasunari Kawabata’s novella House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories is one of his finest works. I was inspired to read this collection after noting that the first sentence of the novella appears as an inscription to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s elegant novella inspired by Kawabata’s, Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Although these are two very distinct works of fiction, they are both primarily concerned with the connections between the young and old, sex, life, death, and remembrance. In K...more Yasunari Kawabata’s novella House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories is one of his finest works. I was inspired to read this collection after noting that the first sentence of the novella appears as an inscription to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s elegant novella inspired by Kawabata’s, Memories of My Melancholy Whores. Although these are two very distinct works of fiction, they are both primarily concerned with the connections between the young and old, sex, life, death, and remembrance. In Kawabata’s story Eguchi is an old man approaching 70 who has been introduced to a special sort of service, an older woman procures young girls whom she drugs to sleep naked in the same room with old men. Eguchi uses these episodes to reflect on the women he has known in his life, including his wife and daughters. He is unusually preoccupied with death through sleeping. The services provided by the old woman include drugs to aid sleeping, and the girls are given a more powerful drug to keep them unconscious. This causes complications later in the story. Kawabata’s unusual exploration of living is further investigated in the other two stories included in this collection; “The Arm” and “Beast And Man.” The first seems to have been possibly inspired by Golgol’s “The Nose” when a woman detaches her arm and gives it a man whoa takes it home to sleep with and at one point detaches his own arm re-attaches the woman’s arm in its stead. However, this act causes him to experience great anxiety. The protagonist of “Beast and Man” feels more at ease with animals in his proximity, the movement of the animals seems to clam him for some reason. All of these characters seem to be deep thinkers and eccentrics; Kawabata writes metaphorically that is cause for reflection after reading his stories. I am interested in reading more. I have read only one other book by him, Beauty and Sadness. It is a novel about a love affair between a young girl and an older distinguished man, a novel that I found impressive as well. (less)

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Jul 24, 2011 Gathienology rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classic

Tựa tiếng Việt: Người đẹp ngủ mê
Đầu tiên cứ phải nói là tôi không thích [văn hóa] Nhật. Nhưng có một cái gì đó cô đơn, hiu quạnh và rưng rưng trong truyện của Kawabata làm tôi mê mẩn. Câu chuyện mở màn cũng tương tự như "Hồi ức về những cô gái điếm buồn của tôi" của Marquez, chỉ khác là, trong này không có sự dung tục, mạnh mẽ, điên rồ đậm chất Mĩ Latin, mà chỉ có man mác buồn, những dòng hồi ức dào dạt xô về khi một ông già nằm cạnh người đẹp ngủ mê, ngủ như đã chết rồi, để luyến tiếc tuổi trẻ...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Moßtafa Ißmeil rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-read, literature-الآداب

هذه الرواية تمتاز عن رواية ماركيز ذاكرة غانياتي الحزينات في أنها تحليلية أكثر عن كونها تعرض أحداث وتهتم بالسرد ,فلم يهتم كاواباتا سوي بافكار العجوز الذي يتردد على بيت به فتيات جيشا لا يفعل شيئ بداخله سوي النوم بجانب هؤلاء الفتيات وهي بالنسبة لعجوز مثله تجربة تجلب في نفسه المتعة و الانبساط فلا شيئ يضاهي التمتع بمنظر فتيات و هن مستلقيات إلي جواره كل ليلة حتي ان العجوز كان يتمني أن يحضره الموت وهو يفعل من وجهه نظره أقصي و أجمل امنياته في ذلك السن الكبير
أعجبني فيها الفكرة فهو سباق علي رواية ماركيز ف...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Jill Collins rated it 4 of 5 stars

I adored House of the Sleeping Beauties, the novella is bizarre and disturbing and infinitely lovely. It did make me melancholy, all the talk of death and being at the end of one's life. I'm not certain the young are meant to think of these things. The story is beautiful and haunting, I found it difficult to put down.

The next story, One Arm, was strange to say the least. A girl removes her arm and lends it to the protagonist for one night. There is a lot of feminist discussion regarding the use...more

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Aug 20, 2012 Frank rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Frank by: Ms Collins

Shelves: nobel-winners

I'm following this up with Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores: two Nobel Laureates, 45-years apart, with the same overall theme. I'm posting the same review for both books, as it is a "compare and contrast" sort of thing:

I’m reviewing these books together because they are two interpretations with the same basic plot at their cores: an older man goes to a brothel to sleep with a virgin. But oddly enough, despite the common setting, “sleep” in both books is not a euphemism f...more I'm following this up with Gabriel García Márquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores: two Nobel Laureates, 45-years apart, with the same overall theme. I'm posting the same review for both books, as it is a "compare and contrast" sort of thing:

I’m reviewing these books together because they are two interpretations with the same basic plot at their cores: an older man goes to a brothel to sleep with a virgin. But oddly enough, despite the common setting, “sleep” in both books is not a euphemism for sex: the girls in Kawabata’s novella are drugged, their clients are forbidden to violate them, though most would be physically unable to do; Márquez’s unnamed narrator finds a fourteen-year-old virgin asleep from exhaustion and doesn’t have the heart (or level of desire) to wake her.

Naturally this gives both men plenty of time to muse on the nature of sex and aging, memory and its vagaries, although with very different aesthetics. House of the Sleeping Beauties has the rigidity and cool complexity of a Zen rock garden; Melancholy Whores is lush and thick as a dripping tropical forest of its unnamed location on the Caribbean coast of South America. Beauties has the harsh sensuality of denial and deprivation—it seems to be always winter—and somewhat in keeping with one’s perception of post-War Japan, before the economic explosion of the ‘60s; Whores exhibits the sensuality of ennui and entropy, the colonial splendour gone seedy, gradually losing the battle against encroaching nature: A metaphor perhaps for its narrator.

I enjoyed the Márquez book much more—perhaps because of the innate cultural bias. I first read it when it was new. When I heard about the plot of House of the Sleeping Beauties, I immediately recognised it and was intrigued. And indeed, Memories of My Melancholy Whores begins with a quote from Kawabata’s work which I didn’t appreciate on my first reading. I’m glad to have found House of the Sleeping Beauties if only for the chance to revisit My Melancholy Whores.
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Aug 05, 2011 Moonchyme rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-literature

Now here is a man who spends a lot of time observing the female body. "House of the Sleeping Beauties" seemed like more of a journal entry full of perverse fantasies described with such detail as to make them seem socially acceptable...I am also a person who loves studying the details of bodies, yet even I found myself a little bored with the extent of his descriptions. I think in the end he made more a work of self-indulgence, less interesting for the readers, as it would be if you found the di...more

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May 14, 2013 Daniela rated it 5 of 5 stars

Me voy a referir al primer cuento: La casa de las bellas durmientes. Kawabata es un gran narrador, super japonesa en la estetica y en como avanza la "historia", la descripción que hace de las niñas del cuento es bastante hermosa y es bastante erotica e intima, aunque nunca de una manera "pornografica" o muy explicita, simplemente transmite las sensaciones de el viejo protagonista, Egushi que se emerge en estas extrañas visitas a la Casa donde bellas jovenes sedadas o drogradas duermen con sus an...more

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Jan 28, 2010 Michael Arden rated it 3 of 5 stars

Yasunari Kawabata along with Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami are the three authors that would most likely come to mind when discussing post-war Japanese novelists, at least among westerners. The 1968 Nobel Laureate for Literature is best known for his novels, 'Snow Country,' 'Thousand Cranes' and 'The Sound of the Mountain'. The stories in this collection are united around the unfulfilled erotic longings of old men. In the title story, the main character, Eguchi, is enticed by an old friend to...more Yasunari Kawabata along with Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami are the three authors that would most likely come to mind when discussing post-war Japanese novelists, at least among westerners. The 1968 Nobel Laureate for Literature is best known for his novels, 'Snow Country,' 'Thousand Cranes' and 'The Sound of the Mountain'. The stories in this collection are united around the unfulfilled erotic longings of old men. In the title story, the main character, Eguchi, is enticed by an old friend to visit an isolated house with a secret second story room where naked young women are drugged into oblivion and completely unaware of the languorous approaches of the impotent old men sleeping beside them. He slyly fails to report the fact that he himself is not impotent to the callous middle aged woman who oversees the house. On four different occasions with different “partners” each night whom he obsesses about, he relives his lifelong relationships with all the women of his life from past lovers to his wife and daughters. He also pushes the strict house rule of no sex with the sleeping young women to the absolute limit. When the unthinkable happens, Eguchi's reaction is contrasted to the woman's, who appears to regard her female charges as so much livestock. Yukio Mishima states in his introduction that the story builds a suffocating atmosphere of impending doom, and quite rightly. The acclaimed translation by Edward G. Seidensticker renders Kawabata's spare, austere and yet poetic writing style accurately according to reviewers fluent in Japanese.

While the title story could be a page out of today's creepy "Tokyo Andaguraundo" (or a Murakami novel), the second story, 'One Arm' turns decidedly surreal. A young lady gaily offers her arm to an old man. She obligingly takes it off her own body (apparently without any ill effect), gives it to him and he proceeds to take it home where he cuddles with it in his bed at night while reliving his amorous memories. One night something awful occurs when he tries to swap out his own arm with hers – a big suspension of disbelief is required for this one.

In the final story, 'Of Birds and Beasts', yet another reclusive old man keeps a menagerie of birds and small animals in his house to alleviate his loneliness. He too recalls his past relationships with women while inspired by tending his animal charges. His care varies from tenderness (he tries to gently revive two kinglet songbirds whose feet he had accidentally scorched while trying to warm them on a brazier after the birds nearly drowned when he forgot them in their bath) to the casual cruelty that seems to be at the core of his being. In a character defining revelry he recalls how he and his long time girlfriend, Chikako, now estranged, had once made a pact to commit suicide together. When she asks him to bind her legs together so she won't kick at her skirt in her death struggles, however, he notes how pretty her legs are and decides they should both go on living after all. Basically the story is a character study without a discernable plot of a sad old man more worthy of pity than scorn. Obviously not for all tastes, these stories plunge the reader into the dark side of the Japanese male psyche where Eros and Death meet in an uncomfortable embrace. Though not to my taste, I would still be interested in reading ‘Snow Country’ or ‘Thousand Cranes’ when I get the chance.

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Jan 26, 2010 Anita Dalton rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-we-own

I finished this book weeks ago but the spectre of writing a review completely stalled me. I kept telling myself to get over here and write but I could not do it. I don’t know exactly why but I suspect it is because I found this book enthralling and repellent. Amazing and disgusting. I consumed it rapidly and wanted then to vomit it back up. Seldom has a book so engrossed me while leaving me so unhappy.

This book consists of a novella, “House of the Sleeping Beauties,” and two short stories, “One...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Mohammed rated it 4 of 5 stars

الكتاب يملك تفاضيل دقيقة للحياة في اليابان و القصة قد تكون مستواحة من نسج اجتماعي واقعي. القصة تتكلم عن الشهوانية و مراهقة رغبان الذابلين في العمر. بغض النظر عن ثقافة الجنس في المجتمع الياباني و التي من خلال السؤال اتضح بانها شبه واقعية في حياتهم ولكن ليس بنفس التفاصيل, اجد ان الكاتب قد عرض ثقافته بطريقة مهذبة.

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Nov 21, 2008 Keleigh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: schooldaze

Kawabata is so masterful at immediately pulling us in, lulling us into a sort of sleepwalking awareness with his ambient descriptions of the house in the night, his slow but even pacing, and the sympathetic but unsparing objectivity with which he regards Eguchi. We get early on that there are secrets and rules to this world, but the specifics are left ambiguous until near the end of the story, when Eguchi considers breaking “the rule of the house” (89) with the dark young girl—followed by a fant...more

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Dec 11, 2012 yengyeng rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: japanese-lit, smartsmut

Once again, the stories are about the inability to connect with real life people resulting in manifestations of eccentricities and perversions made discreet and tolerated by wealth. The costs of spooning living breathing virginal "airdolls" and playing god to exquisite birds in cages and purebred canines were never mentioned. What stood out for me is how the memory of a person, reduced to 3 frames brought on by a scent, an expression or a face, is a fascinating study of a still-frame/portrait of...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Másoome rated it 3 of 5 stars

"خانه ی زیبارویان خفته"
اثر "یاسوناری کاواباتا" که رمان قرن ژاپن نام گرفته ، اثری تحسین برانگیز است که آدمهای اصلی اش را پیرمردها و دختران جوان به خاب رفته تشکیل می دهند.در این رمان با احساساتی چون پریشانی و محنت ناشی از پیری و از کارافتادگی جسمی و جنسی، خشم،ترحم،تقابل با مرگ و... مواجهیم.

در تعریف از این کتاب شاید همین بس که "گابریل گارسیا مارکز " در مقدمه ی اخرین رمانش "خاطرات روسپیان سودا زده ی من " این نقل قول را از اثر کاواباتا می آورد:

"زن مهمانخانه چی به اکوچی پیر هشدار داد مبادا رفتارش زمخ...more

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May 11, 2012 Val rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: world-tour

Nobel prize winning erotica.
I just had to give it a go.
The first story of the three is "House of the Sleeping Beauties", in which an old man visits the house to look at, admire, touch and sleep beside beautiful naked young women. It brings back treasured memories of his first love and other women with whom he had affairs, his wife and children, his vigorous youth.
The writing is rich, sensual and yes erotic, and there is no sex. He likes to think that he is not as old and impotent as the other ol...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Boysie Freeman (not my real name, it's just my Internet name) rated it 4 of 5 stars

My review below is for House of the Sleeping Beauties only, if anyone knows the rest of the stories please leave a reply so I can update my review.

An old man came to brothel to see sleeping girls. Instead of feeling sexually excited, he started to think about the women in his life, loneliness, and death approaching. There is no way one can be turned on by that melacholy. The novella ended in an enigmatic fashion, just like anything written by Kawabata. Although the book is thin, I find it really...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Zhana rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-bulgarian

Last night I started a book that I took from the library. Apparently the book included two of the works of Kawabata Yasunari - "The house of the sleeping beauties" and "One arm". Now, I will talk only about the first novella, because I didn't find the other one interesting (I read it and it was really bad...or may be too abstract for me). "The house of sleeping beauties" is a novella about an old man - Eguchi, who visits a house where old people pay to sleep next to young girls (weird o.O). Sinc...more

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Mar 29, 2009 Tara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: asia, fiction

I discovered that I'd read this book after reading a quote in the front of another book. I remember reading about old Eguchi. I can vividly recall the way he took note of the room and the woman. But I have no recollection of the title, the author, or indeed of reading this book.
And yet I have read it, and can retell the story.
Poetic and explorative. I remember feeling nervous as he entered the room, and as if I were an intruder as he studied the sleeping woman.
I now want to read it again.

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Jan 19, 2009 Peter added it

Kawabata’s story begins with an assertion about good taste. The Madam tells Eguchi that she presumes he will not to do anything in bad taste, that he will not put his finger into the mouth of the sleeping girl or try anything else of that sort. She is ready. The old man goes into the room. A naked girl is asleep in bed. He moves in next to her. What is he to do? He does not know. Look? Smell? He tends her. Keeps her covered and warm. And then the old man dreams of the lovers he has had. Dreams t...more Kawabata’s story begins with an assertion about good taste. The Madam tells Eguchi that she presumes he will not to do anything in bad taste, that he will not put his finger into the mouth of the sleeping girl or try anything else of that sort. She is ready. The old man goes into the room. A naked girl is asleep in bed. He moves in next to her. What is he to do? He does not know. Look? Smell? He tends her. Keeps her covered and warm. And then the old man dreams of the lovers he has had. Dreams the course of his life before he takes the pills the Madam as given him and he falls deeply asleep next to the girl.

Eguchi comes back several times. Three. Five. More. On that first evening the madam tells Eguchi, or does he imagine all of this himself, that the girl would not wake even if you were to strangle her. There after Eguchi will experience an urge to strangle the sleeping beauty in the bed next to him and then an urge to take the very narcotics that have subdued the girls. The girls are asleep to keep safe the honor of the old men who are no longer men. I am not clear about what it is that one may or may not do, only that the beauties awaken memory. Memory is strange. What is memory?

At the climax of the story he is put to bed with two girls. He moves their arms about. One is smaller and has lighter skin than the other. He takes his medication and falls asleep and encounters the death of the darker girl—the dreadful chill of her body is profound enough to wakethe old Eguchi from a deep narcotic sleep. She succumb to the sleeping drug. The madam is called. The girl’s body is quickly taken to a nearby inn to be discovered far from the old men for whom she had been put to sleep. Eguchi speaks many times about the money the girls would earn to lie naked with the old men. They were beautiful. Their skin is always perfect. Their nipples young. Their bodies draped in very little time. As the climax of the story, Eguchi wonders about his wife. He imagines her cold in bed alone. He wonders at his world that is passing. And after death took the girl, Eguchi is too nervous to sleep. He begs for a stronger tonic, for the sleeping drugs given to the girls. But she will not allow it. They are too strong for old men.

Is it really the case that the girls are put to sleep so that the old men will not be shamed by the fact that they are no longer men? what does it mean to preserve honor? Is it possible to preserve oneself from shame? Perhaps lying with women is always steeped in shame, the same kind of shame that belongs to dying.

The House of the Sleeping Beauties is also the house of a kind of reincarnation. Reincarnation is a ‘re-making’ in flesh, the living from the dead, a re-membering, a putting back together again. Memory is an odd kind of reincarnation. It is more like a form of déjà vu. Or just plain magic. The ‘before’ is also and inexplicably the ‘again.’ One has a visceral experience with what is ‘the same but different.’

Love making has always been much more than propaedeutic to death, much more than a ‘little death,’ but rather the climax of sexual union clears away the smoke and collapses dreaming. Love making makes love or openness, it clears the ‘just as it is’ and is ‘as it always has been.’ Love is the inclination that is the how we are. To be in love is a feeling. What is felt? It is an inclination that always runs the risk of being misunderstood as future. Such inclination is neither one or two. It is a leaning without number, without place, without direction. It is not a demonstration and is what it is in getting lost in what is given. Inclination needs to be remembered. Involuntary means without volition. There is no will. Or the idea of a will. Of a future. Love making seems to move toward orgasm but when it gets there. What? Involuntary muscle contractions overwhelm the lovers and every story is washed away. So love is the allowing what is to be as it is, a leaning without telos. But such a thing cannot be made clear by a sentence that gets held up for inspection. How can one lean into nothingness. Nothingness cannot be pronounced without its being brought into being and so no long being what it is. What can be said that is without number?

The nature of the future cannot be expressed in a formula. Every sentence has a subject, a verb and a predicate. To say something always risks the emergence of a proposition, a temptation to organize the happening of the world that happens in communication. What is crucial is that in saying something, sometimes, something is brought be. The certainty that in speaking one is speaking in sentences that refer to something else, namely what the sentences are about, is precisely the misunderstanding of the future as something outstanding, something that is not but will soon be. But maybe this leaning, though never expressible in sentences, in propositions, can be made manifest by the logos, as it haunts the flow of language which in telling a story, running with the enthusiasm of what is next, language becomes perfectly transparent and the nature of the future is glimpsed. The universal desire that Aristotle ascribes to each one of us to know might not be to know knowledge at all, but to understand. The capacity to allow that which is to be as it is. To allow is to love. And to be in love is to stand within in the flickering of mortality.

To know death—to be certain that the proposition “I shall die” is true—must be impossible. For who amongst us is ever there for his death? In German there is a proverb: When I am here, death is not. When death is here, I am not. And yet perhaps one can be obedient to death. Such a possibility is what Kawabata does not articulate. How could he? Don’t you recognize the trick of the German proverb? And yet somehow the sleeping beauties manages a kind of silence in which a man may be lost. The novel does the impossible. It makes manifest what cannot be said. Death as dying is a leaning that opens. It is love. Love transcends every proposition. In reading the house of the sleeping beauties one begins to trust death in life and life in death, for of course, ultimately, we are all obedient to our inclination, to our dying. It has been expressed before. All men desire to know. All men lean towards what is good. But the certainty of death does not belong to the moment of death that lies in an unreachable future. What we cannot do is summon the god. The gods presence is given. Being in love, standing within the flickering of life and death is given. (less)

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May 10, 2013 Elena rated it 4 of 5 stars

¿Puedes conocer a una mujer por observarla y tocarla mientras duerme, aunque ella no puede despertar? La piel me recuerda las flores, los labios a un beso, su juventud a la muerte y sus cabellos al viento. La historia muy original que habla de un hombre que revive alegrías y tristezas por pasar noches con mujeres dormidas. Se puede conseguir por Amazon, para variar los autores japoneses no decepcionan y por sí fuera poco Kawabata es elogiado por Mishima, imaginen cuán bueno es. Súper recomendabl...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Trang Le rated it 5 of 5 stars

While Kawabata's literary style is not my cup of tea. I like House of the Sleeping Beauties nonetheless because I'm preoccupied with death, transience and vigorous youth.I don't care so much about the old man's erotic fantasy as his treasured memories of first love, affairs and bygone youth and his coming into terms with loneliness and the impending death. The whole novella is a work of beauty, complemented by Kawabata's rich and sensual prose.

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Nov 02, 2010 Dorin Budusan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-bookshelf, comparative-literature, favorites

This "esoteric masterpiece" as Yukio Mishima describes it, is a very carefully constructed story, about ageing, eroticism, death, youth and memories. The setting is a closed space, the "house of the sleeping beauties" that starts to become more an more tensioned as the story unveils similar to a "submarine in which people are trapped and the air is gradually disappearing" (Yukio Mishima). The story will haunt you long after you've read it. Also I find Edward Seidensticker's translation magnifice...more

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Feb 16, 2009 Steve Love rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't like reading the blurbs on the backs of books so that I don't come to a story with preconceived ideas. That said, I started reading House of the Sleeping Beauties with my own preconceived ideas based on the title. It sounded like like such a straightforward title, but it and one of the stories that followed, One Arm, took such unusual turns from the very start that I found it pleasantly surprising. Still, this is not my favorite of Kawabata's works that I've read. For that, I recommend T...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Jacquelyn rated it 2 of 5 stars

I read this a number of years ago, and, like the Master of Go, found it hard to relate to. I recognize the mastery of prose shown by Kawabata, and I also recognize that he is addressing a culture that is foreign to me, both in terms of place and time. And I have wondered, based on this book and several others written by Japanese authors, whether the erotic is really so different in Japan.

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Feb 25, 2009 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book, like his Sadness & Beauty, is beautifully written. I love his frugal prose that provides so much visual and emotional detail. The subject matter is incredible and it sounds like he has had first hand experience which is a little weird and sad. But that aside it is a truly amazing portrayal of an old man's dream like visit to his long gone youth. He revisits his youth vicariously through drugged young girls. I needed a few days to think about this one.

Just finished the second story...more

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About Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata (川端康成) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read.

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“A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned.” — 16 people liked it

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