قصة الكتاب :
The House of the Sleeping Beauties is a novella by Japanese author Yasunari Kawahata. It was first published in 1961 and has been adapted into films more recently. The protagonist in the story is Yoshio Eguchi, aged sixty-seven, who visits a Japanese hot-spring resort catering to elderly senile gentlemen. The titular house on which the book is based has an alluring secret. Here the elderly gentlemen get to spend the night with naked young women, who are voluntarily drugged into a deep slumber for the night. The women aren’t prostitutes and cannot be treated as such. The men are permitted nothing more than to caress them and sleep beside them, while they remain asleep, oblivious to everything. \r\n
\r\nThe plot conceived by the author revolves around the subject of lust, particularly that of older men past their prime. He attempts to handle this in a gentle and esoteric fashion, giving voice to the emotion, usually trashed and judged. The elderly gentlemen who frequent the House never break the rules they have to comply with, simply because they cannot. Age weakens their ability to act upon their still vivid impulses. The sleeping girls in the story are representative - beautiful and virginal, like youth itself, and unaware of old age that creeps up afterwards and looks at it with yearning. A sleeping girl is only a fragment of her fully awakened self but manages to awaken the many fragments in the lives of the men who visit the house. These fragments include old memories, awakening in them lost loves, powerful sexual encounters, regrets and the undying longings of the flesh that do not decline with age. The inability to act upon those longings like they once could terrorizes these men, who feel the need to act upon them at any cost even if it means using force. Eguchi’s visit to the house was initially an act of curiosity and not meant to be repeated. But he finds himself returning again and again in the hope of finding something new.\r\n
\r\n\r\nEguchi makes five visits to the house in a single year and these occur from autumn till mid-winter. The seasons mentioned correspond to the seasons of his life, which he relives during the visits to different women. The first experience awakens thoughts that pertain to innocence and new life. As he goes further, the mood begins to darken as he realizes that the experience is his alone. The sleeping woman’s inability to acknowledge his presence feels like a refusal that makes him angry. By the time he makes his last visit, the thoughts in his head focus on death, life’s final experience. The level of insight offered in this book, published at a time that predates all theories and gender studies, is very impressive. Kawabata’s take on the male gaze is intuitive and makes the subject seem new.\r\n