[In the following excerpt, Brock is harshly critical of the pieces in House of the Sleeping Beauties; he finds the title story, for example, "so dull that it requires positive effort to struggle through its sargasso sea of lifeless anatomical detail, to read page after page of its repetitive variations on a basically obnoxious theme. " ]

Kawabata Yasunari was born in Osaka on June 11th 1899. He lost both parents in his second year, his grandmother in his eighth and his grandfather in his sixteenth: losses from which he has, perhaps, never fully recovered. At Tokyo University he studied first English literature and then Japanese literature. While still a student he published Shōkonsai Ikkei (Scenes from Memorial Services for the War Dead) in 1921 and Kaisō no Meijin (An Expert at Attending Funerals) in 1923; so that, when he graduated in 1924, he was already fairly well known as a rising young writer associated with the Shinkankakuha (Neo-Sensualist) Group led by Yokomitsu Riichi. Though that Group originated in an attempt, under basically French influence, to break away from conventional Dickensian, Balzacian and even Zolaesque concepts of the plot and structure of the novel, its stress upon traditional Japanese lyrical beauty and the "language of the heart" brought it into close sympathy with that general reaction then taking place against the early schools of socio-proletarian writing. The main importance of Kawabata's association with this Group is that, though he is now generally regarded as an essentially Japanese writer, the strongest influences upon him during his most formative period were not Japanese; and one may observe throughout all his subsequent work the influence of Proust and, behind Proust, of Ruskin. Kawabata made his real mark with the publication during 1925 of "Izu no Odoriko" ("The Izu Dancing Girl") in the magazine Bungei Jidai (Age of literary Art) of which he had been a co-founder. This book displayed all the main characteristics of his best subsequent work: a deep sense of the world's sadness, a melancholy eroticism and a gentle, almost wistful, nihilism. Already, too, the book contained the beginnings of that technique of understatement, superficially disjointed incident and a subtly hinted analysis of character for which he has been rightly praised. The best of these later works are Yukiguni (The Snow Country), begun in 1935 but not finished until 1947, Yama no Oto (The Sound of the Mountain) of 1949, Sembazuru (Thousand Cranes), published in 1950 but still unfinished, Mizuumi (lake) of 1954 and Koto (The Ancient Capital) of 1962. He, of course, also published a considerable number of other literary works, especially short stories, but, since little of this other work had been translated into English by the time he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1968, it is fair to assume that the award was made on the basis of a comparatively small handful of his longer novels. . . .

The book now under review [House of the Sleeping Beauties], though doubtless it was somewhat hurriedly put together to exploit Kawabata's award, does give the reader a better over-all picture of Kawabata's writing than that conveyed by the handful of books cited by the Swedish Academy. The book contains three stories: "Of Birds and Beasts" ("Kinjū") first published in July 1933, "House of the Sleeping Beauties" ("Nemureru Bijo") first published in 1960-61 and "One Arm" ("Kata Ude") first published in 1963-64. The first story is a typically drifting reminiscence about the deaths of birds and animals by an aging man on his way to see a dance-recital by an aging mistress, the meanness of whose nature was her chief attraction. "He remembered the Chikako of ten years before. Her face when she had sold herself to him had been like a dog's." It is an unpleasant story, though beautifully written, and one finishes it with the feeling that the owl which so disliked the main character (for which reason, of course, the main character admired the owl) was a very sound judge of character. The second story, the best of the three, is fascinating but erotically sickly fantasy about a woman's arm. " 'I can let you have one of my arms for the night,' said the girl. She took off her right arm at the shoulder and, with her left hand, laid it on my knee." It is perhaps worth mentioning that the English translation of this story, though the present book contains no acknowledgment of the fact, was first published in the January 1967 issue of the Japan Quarterly

The third and longest story in this book has been widely praised as one of the finest studies ever written about senile lust, and the introduction by the late Mishima Yukio describes it as an esoteric masterpiece. I find this praise a gross exaggeration and the general pretentiousness of the introduction helps to explain why Mishima, widely rumored to have been himself a candidate for the Nobel Prize, did not win it. The story tells of an unusual establishment where impotent men, if sufficiently wealthy, may spend the night with a drugged young girl: indeed, if so desired, with more than one drugged young girl. As the narrator himself remarks, "Could there be anything uglier than an old man lying the night through beside a girl put to sleep, unwaking? Had he not come to this house seeking the ultimate in the ugliness of old age?" This justified reflection is repeated again and again in the course of the narrator's five visits to the house of the sleeping beauties. The tale is bodied (one might say corpsed) out with a series of similarly sick considerations. "He was tempted. He peered into the open mouth. If he were to throttle her, would there be spasms along the small tongue?" "But the misdeed did not take clear shape in Eguchi's mind as cruelty and terror. What was the very worst thing a man could do to a woman?" "If he were to strangle her, what sort of scent would she give off." Kawabata also manages to include an account of the death of an elderly client and an account of the death and disposal of one of two girls with whom the narrator has passed the night. It is a thoroughly nasty story and, though beauty can be wrung from the most unlikely subjects, Kawabata seems unable to resist the temptation to make nastiness yet more twistedly nasty. Thus, though this story could be defended as an artist's appreciation of the terrors of impotence, it is typical of Kawabata's approach that the narrator of the story obtains access to the house under false pretenses: for it is made abundantly clear that he is not, in fact, impotent. The gentle, melancholy eroticism which characterizes Kawabata's best work has become in this story a sour and warped lubricity. These criticisms may, of course, make the tale sound interesting but it is, in fact, so dull that it requires positive effort to struggle through its sargasso sea of lifeless anatomical detail, to read page after page of its repetitive variations on a basically obnoxious theme.

Kawabata's acknowledgment, immediately his Nobel Prize had been announced, of his debt to his translators, typical of the man's warm generosity, is equally typical of his perceptiveness. With one exception, all previous winners of the Nobel Prize for literature were representatives of the Western literary tradition and it is no reflection on the solitary exception, Sir Rabindranath Tagore who won it in 1913, to suggest that, had he written only in Bengali and never in English, he would not have gained the recognition which he so thoroughly deserved. Since 1901, when the Nobel Prizes were established, Japan has produced several writers (notably Natsumi Sōseki) eminently qualified to win the prize for literature. But it was not until after 1945 that translations of Japanese literature became available in sufficient and continuing quantity to make a genuine impact on the Western world. Such a flow of translations depends, of course, upon the existence of an adequate body of translators: and one may reasonably wonder to what extent current world interest in Japanese literature, even Kawabata's award, reflect the fact that during the late Pacific War it was just as necessary that some Americans should learn Japanese as that others should land on Iwo Jima. Though already by 1957 some of Kawabata's work had been translated into Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Swedish and Yugoslavian, it is to the Americans that the West really owes the new generality of its appreciation of Japanese literature.