Tales From the Cafe

Tales from the Café is the second book in Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. It was first published in Japan in 2017, and English translations appeared in 2020 (UK) and 2021 (US). Kawaguchi began his career as a playwright, and Before the Coffee Gets Cold was adapted from a play that won the grand prize at the Suginami Drama Festival.

Tales from the Café is a contemporary Japanese magical realist novel. It is set in Funiculi Funicula, a Tokyo café where it is possible to travel to the past. The novel blends the everyday and the supernatural and subverts many time-travel tropes. For example, one of the rules is that no matter what one does in the past, the present does not change. Some of the novel’s key themes are Changing the Future Versus Changing the Self, Happiness as a Choice, and The Importance of Ritual.

This guide refers to the 2021 US Picador edition, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss suicide and pregnancy loss.

Plot Summary

Tales from the Café is the second novel in Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. Like the first novel in the series, Tales from the Café contains four sections, each of which centers on the story of one individual who travels through time from the café. Set in Tokyo’s Funiculi Funicula café, the novel focuses on those who are willing to follow a very specific set of rules to travel in time. These rules are: it is not possible to change the present, no matter what one does in the past; one can only meet people who have visited the café; time travel is only possible from one chair, which is usually occupied by a ghost who goes to the toilet once per day; and one must return before their coffee gets cold or they die.

The novel includes both self-contained narratives and novel-long character arcs. The primary characters who appear across all chapters are the members of the same extended family: the Tokitas, who own and work in the café. Kazu is the daughter of Kaname, the ghostly woman in white who usually occupies the time travel chair. While Kazu appears in the first novel in the series, her relationship with the woman in white is only revealed gradually throughout Tales from the Cafe as several characters see her and her mother in the past.

Kazu is the waitress responsible for pouring the coffee that transports patrons through time. At the age of seven, she poured the coffee that enabled her mother Kaname to visit her late husband. Kaname let the coffee get cold and died as a result, and she has remained trapped in the café as a ghost ever since. Kazu has felt guilty since the incident, holding herself responsible for her mother’s death and not allowing herself to leave the café or move on with her life. Toward the end of the novel, she becomes pregnant. After that, she is no longer able to pour the coffee because her powers transfer to her unborn daughter.

The other characters who appear throughout the novel are the café owner, Nagare, and his daughter, Miki. Almost seven years old, Miki is excited for her opportunity to pour the coffee, and she interacts with café patrons throughout the novel, attempting to pour the coffee when the adults aren’t looking. Her turn eventually comes near the end of the novel when she turns seven and Kazu is no longer able to pour the coffee due to her pregnancy.

The first chapter focuses on Gohtaro Chiba, who goes to the past to visit his best friend, Shuichi. More than 20 years earlier, the two friends met in the café. Gohtaro was bankrupt, and Shuichi gave him a job in his restaurant. A year later, Shuichi and his wife were killed in a car accident, and Gohtaro decided to raise their one-year-old daughter, Haruka, as his own. In the present, Haruka is getting married, and Gohtaro decides he must tell her the truth about her real father. He feels guilty and is planning to remove himself from his daughter’s life after telling her the truth.

Gohtaro meets Shuichi and lies to him, saying that he wants to make a video message for Haruka on her wedding day. Gohtaro is emotional throughout the meeting, and Shuichi figures out that his friend is lying and that he died. He presses Gohtaro for details, then instructs his friend to continue acting as Haruka’s father and to be happy. Gohtaro returns to the present intending to do so. When he arrives, he asks Kazu if the woman in white is her mother, and she confirms that she is.

The second chapter centers on Yukio Mita, the brother of café regular Kyoko Kijima. Their mother, Kinuyo, recently died after a long illness. The siblings are estranged because Kyoko did not inform Yukio that Kinuyo was in the hospital; their mother didn’t want to worry him. Yukio is an aspiring potter and is bankrupt after being conned by a would-be investor. He is in despair between his economic situation and his mother’s death. He goes to the past to visit his mother and intends to let his coffee go cold as a way to die by suicide. After speaking to his mother, however, he experiences a deep personal change. He decides to drink his coffee and return to the present. After doing so, he feels newly hopeful and makes changes to his life and career.

In Chapter 3, Katsuki Kurata travels to the present-day café from the past, hoping to meet his former girlfriend, Asami. In his timeline, Kurata was about to propose to Asami when he was diagnosed with leukemia and given a poor prognosis. He kept his diagnosis secret from her and planned to travel to the future on Christmas Day. Kurata instructed his friend, Fumiko, to bring Asami to the café unless he survived or if Asami was happily married to someone else. Fumiko agonized over what to tell Asami, who had not married after Kurata’s death but did seem to be happy. Fumiko eventually told Asami about Kurata’s plan. On this day, Asami borrows Fumiko’s wedding ring and arrives at the café to convince Kurata she is married and happy. When she leaves the café, she tells Fumiko that she will be happy to honor Kurata’s life.

The fourth chapter focuses on Kiyoshi Manda, a detective who plans to return to the past to see his wife, who died 30 years earlier, and give her a birthday gift. Kiyoshi has blamed himself for his wife’s death since he was supposed to meet her in the café but was prevented from doing so by work. When she left the café, she was killed in a mugging. At this point, Kazu has become pregnant and is no longer able to pour the coffee, so Miki pours the coffee for the first time. When Kurata meets his wife and tells her who he is, she is overcome by emotion, having thought that he was planning to break up with her, not give her a gift. He tells her that he wanted to talk to her that day about his intention to leave his job, and he assures her that he was happy with her. In the past, he also sees Kaname, who is pregnant with Kazu.

When Kiyoshi returns from the past, he speaks to Kazu about his experience. He tells her he saw Kaname and that she seemed happy. Kiyoshi explains that before he decided to travel back in time, he investigated the café patrons to figure out why they bothered with time travel. His own trip back in time has led him to decide to be happy rather than continue to feel guilty about his wife’s death. He tells Kazu that their situations are similar. Kazu puts her hand on her stomach and declares aloud her intention to be happy. When she does, Kaname smiles down at her novel, then disappears.