Tales From the Cafe

Tales from the Café (2017) is the second book in Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s series. The first, Before the Coffee Gets Cold was published in Japan in 2015 and was adapted from a play. The series also includes Before Your Memory Fades (2018), Before We Say Goodbye (2021), and Before We Forget Kindness (2023).

Before the Coffee Gets Cold takes place in a small, underground Tokyo café called Funiculi Funicula. It remains almost unchanged since its opening in 1874: It has no air conditioning (though it is always pleasantly cool), several clocks on the wall that tell the wrong time, and there is an antique cash register. Its claim to fame is that it offers patrons an opportunity to travel back in time. One of the most important aspects of the first novel is that it establishes the rules of time travel within the café. The rules are also a particularly unique element of Kawaguchi’s use of magical realism and subversion of time travel tropes, whereby time travelers must always be careful not to disrupt the future.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold is divided into four sections: The Lovers, Husband and Wife, The Sisters, and Mother and Child. In the first section, Fumiko and Goro break up in the café because Goro has decided to travel to America for a work opportunity. After learning the rules of time travel and being briefly cursed by Kaname, the resident ghost, when she asks to borrow her seat, Fumiko travels back in time to talk to Goro. In doing so, she learns the extent of his affection for her. He tells her that he will be back in three years and asks her to wait for him. The next section tells the story of two café regulars, married couple Kohtake and Fusagi. Fusagi has Alzheimer’s disease and gradually forgets Kohtake. He travels back in time to when he does remember her to give her a letter. In it, he asks Kohtake to leave him if he cannot remember who she is because he doesn’t want her to act as his nurse.

The third section focuses on one of the café’s regulars, Hirai, who owns a nearby bar. Her estranged sister, Kumi, was killed in a car accident, and her parents blame her because Kumi died on her way home from visiting Hirai in Tokyo (though Hirai always refused to see her sister on these visits). Hirai returns to the date of Kumi’s last visit. Her perspective on her home and sister changes because of their conversation, and she eventually returns home from Tokyo to run the family’s inn.

In the final section, café owner Nagare’s wife, Kei, is pregnant. Because she has a chronic heart condition, doctors have suggested terminating the pregnancy, but she doesn’t want to. She is making peace with the fact that all she may be able to do for her child is bring them into the world. She goes to the future and meets her daughter, Miki.