After the BanquetAfter the Banquet, Mishima's 1960 novel, is a portrait of love and marriage in later life, featuring his best female character the irrepressible Kazu. For years, Kazu has run her fashionable restaurant with a combination of charm and shrewdness. Then she falls in love. The man is one of her clients, an aristocratic retired politician, and she renounces her business in order to become his wife. But it is not so easy to renounce her independent spirit.