[In the following excerpt, Stuewe asserts that in House of the Sleeping Beauties, "Kawabata's writing … confronts the most basic contradictions of human life with poise and serenity, and makes high art out of the existential ebb and flow that will ultimately lay us low."]

Bodily decline, and in the case of the story "One Arm," dismemberment, play prominent roles in Yasunari Kawabata's House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories translated into English in 1969 and now available in an attractive paperback edition…. The title novella relates an elderly man's fascination with an unusual kind of brothel, where those who can no longer make love to women pay to watch them sleep. This may sound like an unpromising or even precious conceit, but Kawabata develops it beautifully. Evocative memories of love affairs past are delicately compared to the subtler attractions of voyeurism, and the starker contrast between old age and youth is muted by expressing it in terms of the corresponding varieties of sleep: turbulent but refreshing for the young, fitful and imminently permanent for the aged. Life must end in death, but in "House of the Sleeping Beauties" a life is temporarily revived by the contemplation of youth in temporary repose, and the manifold nuances of this charged situation are stunningly rendered.

The book also includes two short stories of similar excellence. The narrator of "One Arm" first borrows and then exchanges his own arm for that of a young girl, as what initially seems an amusingly surreal experiment gradually becomes a very serious exploration of the boundaries of individual identities. In "Of Birds and Beasts" the protagonist, who can no longer tolerate human companionship, seeks solace in the observation of his pets. But this too proves dissatisfying, and as the story ends he is becoming fascinated with the diary of a girl who died at an early age: the implicit conclusion is that life is attractive when fixed at a beautiful moment, and death may be negated by artful preservation. This could also serve as a motto for Kawabata's writing, which confronts the most basic contradictions of human life with poise and serenity, and makes high art out of the existential ebb and flow that will ultimately lay us low.