At first glance there might seem to be a certain naïveté about After The Banquet …, as if the author, in writing a novel, were imitating an alien idiom. But this initial reaction … quickly vanishes; the apparent naïveté turns into a style all its own, direct yet allusive, poetic without being gushing, and we realize that the author has accomplished the amazing feat of making his novel entirely successful by Western standards and yet never losing contact with his own great tradition of Japanese poetry. (p. 162)

The plot is slight; the novel triumphs as a character study of a couple past their prime caught in the toils of a hopeless marriage. In Kazu, particularly, Mr. Mishima has caught the pathos of the middle-aged woman fluttering in love with the impulsiveness and abandon of a young girl as we have not had it in fiction since the best...