@article{oai:nichibun.repo.nii.ac.jp:00007226,
 author = {MEBED, Sharif},
 journal = {Japan review : Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies},
 month = {},
 note = {The present study analyzes Kawabata Yasunari’s novella, House of the Sleeping Beauties (Nemureru bijo), focusing on the role and function of law and its relationship to desire in that work and in literary art in general. To explore this question, the writer has called upon the theoretical work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981). At first glance, Kawabata’s writing seems to be completely disconnected from French theory or theoretical discourse; Kawabata is known for his sensitive depiction of Japanese aesthetics, deploying images of Geisha, traditional dancers, and conventional family scenes, which seem distant from the student turmoil, political background and Tel Quel movement that spurred on Derrida, Kristeva, Barthes, and Lacan. Yet, as demonstrated in the paper, Kawabata and Lacan do share a common respect for Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and a critical view of language. Additionally, Kawabata wrote a number of avant-garde works including “Crystal Fantasy, Suishō gensō” (1931), the film scenario A Page of Madness (1926), The Lake (1955), “One Arm” (1965), and House of the Sleeping Beauties (1960). These works and others can be read as extended meditations on the unconscious and the nature of the human subject. Among those works, House of the Sleeping Beauties is taken up here because it highlights the nature of human desire and its relationship to language, law, the illicit, and the taboo: concepts of key interest to both Japanese literary studies and psychoanalysis.},
 pages = {89--106},
 title = {A Critique of Desire : Law, Language, and the Death Drive in Kawabata’s House of the Sleeping Beauties},
 volume = {32},
 year = {2019}
}