The House of the Sleeping Beauties (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Yasunari Kawabata
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Novella
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: 1960
- Setting: An unnamed hot-spring resort in Japan
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s, Self-discovery, Sex or sexuality, Prostitution or prostitutes, Death or dying, Japan or Japanese people, Resorts or spas, Sleep
- Locales: Japan
Characters Discussed
Yoshio Eguchi, a sixty-seven-year-old man. A light sleeper with a tendency to have bad dreams, he apparently has had several affairs and remembers the “ugliness” of spending nights with tragic, sad women. Given the opportunity to sleep next to young virgins, heavily drugged and therefore incapable of revealing anything about their lives, he longs for more than the physical touch he is allowed. In the five nights that he spends with six young women, he relives events in his life, all seemingly randomly evoked associations with each woman. Although...
[The entire page is 577 words long]
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