In the novel The House of the Sleeping Beauties by Japanese Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, a man named Eguchi frequents a very unique brothel. It is an exclusive, secret place that you can only find if someone else has told you about it. Here, elderly and impotent men get to sleep next to young, naked women who have been sedated with sleeping pills.

Looking at the bodies of the women, Eguchi ponders what it is like to age sexually. What happens when a body that has already lived an entire life is confronted with a body that is still in the spring of theirs?

At the same time, it triggers memories of events and emotions from his past. How did Eguchi treat his former lovers? What kind of father was he to his daughters when they were growing up? Dream and reality are not separated but become inextricably entwined.