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"Ditches rot and stone pavement wears away. But once they too were at a crossroads on a festival day."

A charming, quiet novel that covers that kind of love that people can't be bothered too much to write or read about, indeed seem almost repelled by: old people falling in love.
The aging owner of a Tokyo restaurant falls for an even older ex-foreign minister she meets by chance. She decides to secretly back his campaign to become mayor of the capital.
That's the plot. But with Mishima's novels, there is always something thicker than the plot. Here, it is the fading grace of a charming, independent woman who does not want to die alone and unsung. The austere, humorless object of her affections is a conundrum, to her and the reader, and the weird twists and turns of their relationship form the backbone here.
You'll be won over by Mishima's wit and insight from passages like this one:
"The sound of his gargling--foamy, granular, bubbling--seemed a proof that he was definitely there, alive before her. If that were true, she too was alive, and there was place for neither boredom nor inaction in such a life."