Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Kazu’s cousin and the café’s manager, Nagare is a large-framed, narrow-eyed man with an intimidating presence. He is an enthusiastic chef who spends exorbitant amounts on acquiring good ingredients for the café. He is gruff and reserved: “When he felt joy, he found himself unable to express his happiness openly” (115), as is discussed in the theme of Gender, Restraint, and Emotion. Despite this, he is passionately devoted to his wife’s well-being and worries for her life when he learns that she is pregnant and wants to keep the baby. Nagare is concerned that if Kei travels to the future to meet her child “and [discovers] that the child [doesn’t] exist, the inner strength that had been sustaining her would be destroyed” (187).

Nagare does not get too involved in the café’s time travel rituals. He is a static character, as he does not have a notable character arc; instead, he mainly supports Kei, Kazu, and (to a lesser extent) the café visitors. However, he cannot help warming to Miki, the 15-year-old visitor from the future who arrives at the start of Part 3. As the girl is so lovely, he is transformed by her presence and anxious about intimidating her. Since he does not know she is his daughter, he flatters himself that she has come to see him, even wondering if she specifically chose to come when no other café staff was present. He is irritated when she responds to Kazu after ignoring his questions and crestfallen when she adamantly declares that she isn’t there to see him. This indicates one danger of time travel; if even the café staff do not always know the identities of their visitors, some time travelers have likely ended up in highly awkward situations.

Kei’s visit into the future shows that Nagare does not stay on as the café manager, as he is in Hokkaido on some mysterious endeavor when Miki meets her mother. His ambiguous ending lends him the same elusiveness as Kazu, and his connection to time travel, including whether or not he has any control over it, is not explained in the novel.

Kei chose to marry Nagare when she was 17, thereby choosing a life in the café. She is bold and playful; she dubbed Nagare “mummy man” when she met him in the hospital because he was wrapped up in bandages (176). Kei has eyes that are “round and sparkling as a little girl’s” and a weak heart (16), and her life has been punctuated by long internments in the hospital. As a child, Kei was excluded from many of her peers’ vigorous activities, but she adopted a positive attitude that only slipped after her father died. At her mother’s urging, Kei decided that her father would want her to be happy, so she resolved to return to her usual cheer. Kei’s background gives her a strong acceptance of life and death, which is shown when, smiling, she notes that it “looks like the cherry blossoms have had it” and “[shows] no grief for their passing” (16). In Japan, cherry blossoms—notorious for extremely brief flowering seasons—are symbolic of the transience of life, and grief at the end of the cherry blossom season is considered a universal emotion. Kei’s reaction indicates her ability to be optimistic even in the face of sorrow.

Throughout Parts 1-3, Kei, who is “always charming and never shy […] comfortable with the most intimidating of customers” acts as a witness for the chrononauts and even provides them with crucial information (115). Her warm presence counters Kazu’s coolness and Hirai’s brashness and releases tension at difficult moments. When Kohtake relates how her husband has forgotten her, Kei produces a bottle of sake. Her ability to quickly slake off sadness influences others.

Kei is anxious during her pregnancy because she knows she will not live to see her child grow up. Even early into the pregnancy, she talks to her child, showing her already-burgeoning love for her unborn daughter. Time travel allows her to check on her future child’s well-being, but faced with the sight of Miki, the normally outgoing Kei freezes and “suddenly [has] no idea how to talk to her” (204). She is consumed with guilt at bringing the girl into the world and then not living to see her grow up. Time travel enables Kei to learn to accept that others will help her, just as she has helped them. With Fumiko’s guidance, Kei realizes that guilt won’t help Miki, and she is able to successfully return to her usual demeanor and express her love to Miki directly. For Kei, love is “the most important thing” (212), even in the face of an unchangeable world.

When Kei returns to the present and checks herself into the hospital, she is in full acceptance of both the present and the future. Her loving nature inspires the others to support each other after her demise.

Twenty-eight-year-old Fumiko is a newcomer to the café and time travel and thereby acts as the reader’s guide to The Constraints of Time Travel. She models “excitement at the chance of returning to the past” (21), as well as frustration upon learning the present cannot be changed. Through her, readers learn the café’s time travel mechanics and the dangers that accompany its limits. Her impatience—shown when she tries to push the ghost woman out of the seat—introduces the ghost woman’s curse. Narratively, this aligns with the theme of From Individualism to Unity: Time travel occurs on the café’s terms, not the traveler’s. Fumiko must learn patience, both to travel to the past and to find her answers while she’s there.

Fumiko is a beautiful, successful businesswoman who works for a medical IT firm and speaks six languages. Her boyfriend, Goro, is a systems engineer who is three years younger than her. Goro has a “painful, long-standing complex” about the burn scar on his forehead (53), which causes him to doubt Fumiko’s love. Goro assumes that Fumiko will one day leave him for someone more attractive, so he decides to follow his childhood dream and go to work at the game company TIP-G in America. Together, Fumiko and Goro explore Gender, Restraint, and Emotion. Though Fumiko thrives, she must still navigate Japan’s patriarchal society; she dresses conservatively, and her parents pressure her with weekly emails about marriage. Fumiko favors intelligence over appearances and loves Goro for his sense of humor and problem-solving skills. Goro, however, buries his insecurity in work and does not show his emotions, leaving Fumiko hurt and confused when he breaks up with her. Fumiko wonders whether Goro ever told her he loved her and recalls how he “would look down sometimes, almost apologetically, and stroke his right eyebrow” (53). Fumiko only grasps the extent of his self-consciousness (and his love for her) when she travels to the past and learns he intends to return to Japan in three years. She establishes a deeper connection with him through compassion; this growth shows later on, when, although she wants to know whether she and Goro will marry, she sacrifices a trip to the future and lets Kei take the seat.

Kei’s trip into the future reveals that Goro, like Fumiko, aligns with the novel’s progression From Individualism to Unity as he sacrifices his career dreams to become the café’s manager and help raise Miki. His fully visible scar indicates that he has reached a degree of self-acceptance. Fumiko, too, helps care for Miki and the café, transforming from a go-getting individualist to someone as selfless and maternal as Kei. 

Fusagi and Kohtake are two of the café’s regulars. Fusagi is “a dull-looking man” who comes to the café daily to read and write in a notebook (6). Once a fussy landscape gardener, the now-placid Fusagi blends into the background and reads about gardens in travel magazines. Kohtake, a calm, mild-mannered nurse in her forties, is Fusagi’s wife; she visits the cafe out of concern for her husband, who does not remember her because of his Alzheimer’s.

Like Goro and Nagare, Fusagi aligns with the theme of Gender, Restraint, and Emotion. Part of Fusagi’s inability to express himself stems from his Alzheimer’s; however, even before his diagnosis, Fusagi was insecure about his illiteracy. Fusagi grew up in an impoverished seaweed-trading family and had no time to study. During his long-distance courtship with Kohtake, he would answer her long letters with curt replies. Unaware of Fusagi’s inability to understand her, Kohtake grew frustrated and doubted Fusagi’s feelings; however, his punctual responses made his letters seem “frank and genuine” (81). Additionally, though he could not read it, Fusagi sensed Kohtake’s unhappiness when she finally sent him an ultimatum; he replied with a marriage proposal, which managed in a “few words” to “move [Kohtake] in a way she had never felt before” (81). Fusagi’s brief sincerity inspired Kohtake to respond with equal brevity: a simple “Yes, let’s” (81).

Fusagi is the only male character who wants to travel to the past. He is determined to give his wife a letter, as he does not recognize that his nurse is “Mrs. Fusagi.” He calls her by her maiden name (Kohtake), which hurts Kohtake deeply, even though she tries to find reassurance in staying in his life as his nurse. Fusagi’s Alzheimer’s prevents him from being able to travel to the past, due to The Constraints of Time Travel—he cannot remember to use the seat at the proper time, nor would he be able to envision the proper timing he would need to find his wife in the past. Kohtake takes up the role of time traveler in his stead. Just like Fumiko, time travel teaches Kohtake patience and compassion; she learns that, just as he expressed love in an unusual method (short letters), Fusagi is remembering her in his own way via the gardens in the travel magazines. She also learns that Fusagi’s letter was a noble attempt to free her from an unhappy marriage should his Alzheimer’s prevent him from being a proper husband to her. These revelations inspire Kohtake to reclaim her married name and find bittersweet contentment at Fusagi’s side. She assures Fusagi that she is his wife and that they visited the places in the magazines together.

Yaeko Hirai, known as Hirai in the novel, is a 30-something regular of the café who visits on her breaks from her successful late-night snack bar. Hirai’s free-spirited nature shows in her appearance, which deviates from Japan’s generally conservative beauty standards. Hirai goes to the cafe with her hair in curlers and wears clashing colors and flashy styles, like bright red miniskirts and purple leggings. She is highly irreverent, even pairing her kimono—a traditionally ceremonial garment—with Western styles. Hirai’s behavior also deviates from standard gender expectations as she chain-smokes and speaks bluntly.

Hirai’s younger sister, Kumi, is Hirai’s polar opposite. She is sweet-tempered, community-minded, and dresses conventionally. Kumi generously stepped in to fulfill the familial duty and run the family ryokan (traditional inn) after Hirai left Sendai for Tokyo. Hirai is estranged from their parents, but Kumi adores her and dreams of running the inn with her sister. She tries to visit Hirai, but Hirai continuously rebuffs her. Hirai knows that Kumi struggles to run the inn. She assumes Kumi resents Hirai for her freedom while she is stuck in their parents’ service. Kumi dies on the way home from trying (and once again failing) to meet her sister.

While Kumi is alive, Hirai rejects her to the end, refusing to read the letter Kumi wrote in the café. It is only after Kumi’s funeral (and the other café regulars’ depreciation of Hirai’s attitude) that Hirai decides to travel to the past and read the letter. Unlike the other time travelers, Hirai is tough, unfazed by the physical sensations of time travel. However, she is the most changed by the experience as she learns how much Kumi loved and missed her and how much she let her sister down. Hirai, overcome with grief and guilt, almost refuses to drink her coffee and return to the present. This would have rendered her the café’s new ghost woman. However, at Kei’s urging, she returns and goes back to Sendai to manage the inn. Although her newly conservative clothing and sober bun indicate a sacrifice of Hirai’s free spirit, the photograph of her smiling with her parents suggests that her soul is at peace. This befits the novel’s movement From Individualism to Unity.