Yasunari Kawabata the Old Age

Yasunari Kawabata

The old age is presented like the accumulation of all the ugliness in one's life. Sixty-seven-year-old Eguchi is visiting the House of the Sleeping Beauties to spend a night beside a young girl who is in a deep drug induced sleep.

The woman who showed him around and finally brought him to the chamber where the girl was sleeping told him that she only accepted guests she could completely trust. The meaning of her words would be later revealed to old Eguchi. He was on the verge of becoming like one of those men who used to visit the House of Sleeping Beauties, a man "who was no longer a man." (Kawabata, 17), and thus trustworthy for the woman of the house.

The author scatters some hints along the way so that the reader might guess what is that the old man is looking for when he visits the House of the Sleeping Beauties. First of all, there is the contrast between ugliness and beauty and the two stages in one's life that are associated with them, in the author's view. The almost senile man is presented as living an age that preserved only ugly aspects, living nothing beautiful about it at all, not even the dream world. He was coming to this house where he would sleep beside a young girl, beautiful in her youth. The woman of the house seems to anticipate what he might be able to find in the room she was leading him to when she tells him that: "Some gentlemen say they have good dreams when they come here...Some say they remember how it was when they were young"(idem, 18).

The beauty old Eguchi found in the young girl asleep was not an artificially created beauty. She was not wearing any make-up and she was lying in bed completely necked. Her hair smelled "maidenly"(idem, 19).

At the beginning, Eguchi did not seem to be aware of what he was looking for when he came to the House of the Sleeping Beauty. His train of though unravels his discovery step-by-step thus making the reader aware of the purpose of all those old clients who used to frequent the house. He found himself thinking of the young girl sunk in her deep sleep as of a "live toy" (Kawabata, 20) created in order for the old men to feel completely comfortable around her. Regardless of what a man has achieved in his life, he will always need to be confident in his virility. Old age comes with the loss of that, but the need for pleasure does not go along with the physical attributes. A natural young beauty sleeping could be the perfect gift for an old man looking for nice dreams or just for a glimpse of what he used to be when he was young. The young sleeping beauty is described as a possible life source for the old men: "for the old men she could be life itself. Such life was perhaps, life to be touched with confidence" (idem, 20). As previously noted, the lack of any kind of reaction from the girl gave those old men the ability to emerge in a long lost world.

Studying the girl's physical appearance, and smelling her scent, Eguchi was experiencing mixed emotions. The smell reminded him of babies, but he realized that a young woman approaching twenty could not smell like milk. He might have actually returned to his own age of the innocence, "a passing specter" (idem, 20).

The author creates a very strong contrast between everything that old and young symbolize. Old age is represented only trough ugliness, decay, coldness, dark, bad smells. On the other hand, youth, the thing that Eguchi and all the rest of those visiting the house were hoping to find, is full of nursery smells, warm feelings, nice, melodious sounds. The story further unravels another possible explanation for the smell of milk Eguchi first sensed lying beside the girl. He was almost senile, but he still had something left from his virility that made him slightly different than Kiga, his friend who introduced him to the house. He was also able to detect the smell of a young woman in her odor.

For the old Kiga, the experience was like "sleeping with a secret Buddha"(Kawabata, 22). It seemed both mystical and also available only to those initiated. By contrast, Eguchi was at first only able to find earthly, palpable features in the sleeping young girl. He was able to feel the smell of babies, to remember his own daughters' smell from the time they were nursing his grand-children. The experience becomes more complex. It adds to what could be a rather sexual episode destined to make an old man feel alive again for a night, the flavor of maternity, the mystery of creation.

The smells, the view, the sound of the young sleeping beauty overwhelmed Eguchi with memories. He remembered the geisha he used to visit who got angry because he smelled like his younger son, he held in his arms just before coming to her. That represents fatherhood, treason, jealousy, all the features of the passionate young age. Further, Eguchi remembers the blood he sucked out of the breasts of his first love. "It was a triviality, but the girl whose breast had been wet with blood had taught him that a man's lips could draw blood from almost any part of a woman's body" (idem, 25).