In the following essay, Palmer examines Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories in an attempt to demonstrate that the form the author employed in these pieces was much more congenial to his talents than the novel form.

In the following essay, Palmer emphasizes the importance of Kawabata's “palm-of-the-hand” short stories to his fictional oeuvre.

In the essay below, Kimball closely scrutinizes the imagery in "House of the Sleeping Beauties, " detecting numerous pairs of opposing or contradictory images in the story.

In the following essay, DeVere Brown discusses how Kawabata focused on traditional culture in his major works.

Keene is an American scholar and critic who has produced a number of translations and studies of Japanese literature. The following excerpt is taken from his discussion of Kawabata in the fiction volume of his acclaimed two-part literary history of contemporary Japanese letters. Here he surveys Kawabata's early short fiction, particularly "The Izu Dancer, "placing it in the context of the author's life and artistic development

[No] one can fail to notice the obsession with time modern man exhibits…. To think about the literary masters of this century is to think in large measure about the temporal concerns pervading their work…. [All] have striven to celebrate and describe those moments in which the mind's experience of time is somehow absent, those moments in which it can be said of the mind that it shares in the timeless, in the eternal. Writers in the Orient too have partaken in the quest….

In the excerpt below, Petersen details the imagery and allusive language of "House of the Sleeping Beauties. "

In the following essay, Araki traces Kawabata's changing style and notes "a steady progression in the refinement of his technical mastery and a development of the ability to enter deeply into his characters."

In the essay below, Takeda identifies Western literary influences on numerous Kawabata short stories.

In the following excerpt, Miner discusses how Tanizaki Junichiro and Kawabata use different aspects of traditional Japanese literature, and how their work differs from the literature of the West.

In the excerpt below, Masao examines Kawabata's early experimentation with European avant-garde aesthetics in several short stories. The critic finds "The Izu Dancer, " however, a tradition-based piece that provides an "alternative to the eccentric internationalism of [Kawabata's 'modernist9 stories."]

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. "

[The] early loss of [Kawabata's] parents seems responsible for the unique quality which one perceives in his life and work—a peculiar tension between life and death, detachment and attachment, the abstract and sensuous, whence derives a very special awareness of beauty bordering on sorrow…. [The] uniqueness of Kawabata's style is not its imitation of European modernism but rather its use of quintessentially Japanese poetic sensibility in the once prosaic genre of the novel. (p. 1...

Fitzsimmons is an American poet, educator, and critic with a special interest in Japanese culture. In the following highly favorable assessment of 'House of the Sleeping Beauties, he perceives a theme unifying the three stories in the volume: the "lasting and lucid vision of one aspect of human fear."

Mishima is considered one of the most important modern Japanese writers. Both prolific and versatile, he wrote dozens of novels, dramas, short stories, essays and screenplays. His works often reflect his adherence to traditional Japanese values, a dedication which was ultimately demonstrated in his ritual suicide in 1970. In the essay below, he extols the interwoven themes and precise scenic detail in the title story of the collection House of the Sleeping Beauties.

In the following favorable evaluation of Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, Ury notes that each of the pieces in the volume is "less a story in the usual sense than a node of storytelling, where sounds, textures, tastes, colors, trajectories and intimations are gathered, ready to expand over an invisible canvas. "

In the essay below, lebowitz maintains that the compression of detail in the stories in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories is reflective of aspects of both primitivism and sophistication in Japanese culture.

In the laudatory review below, Seibold admires the polish and precision of the pieces in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.

In the following review, Smock praises the concision and the highly evocative quality of the pieces in Palm-of-the-Hand Stories.