Summary
Narrated in the past tense by a third-person omniscient narrator, Before the Coffee Gets Cold opens with a man and woman sitting in a basement café in Tokyo. The nine-seat basement café is dark and lit by a few shaded lamps that give the walls a sepia hue. Three large antique clocks are on the walls; however, they show different times. Over their coffee, the man informs the woman he is moving to America for work, and his flight is leaving in several hours. The woman realizes he is breaking up with her rather than asking her to marry him, as she hoped. They have been together for two years. It frustrates her that he is refusing to give her an explanation and is being passive. He leaves, paying their bill with a thousand-yen note.
A week later, the woman—a career-driven and attractive medical IT director named Fumiko Kiyokawa—relates the story of how her boyfriend Goro’s “serious conversation” turned out to be a disappointment. She speaks to Yaeko Hirai, a fellow customer sitting cross-legged on the counter, and a waitress Kazu Tokita. Fumiko says she had been too proud to beg him not to leave her, but she’d wanted to shout it. Fumiko saw a TV program about urban legends, and it reminded her that several years earlier this café—Funiculi Funicula—had become famous for transporting people back in time. She therefore begs Kazu to send her back so she can set things right with Goro. Kazu and Hirai are reluctant. Kazu explains that it is possible to go back, but says, “When you go back, no matter how hard you try, the present won’t change.” Fumiko is upset and disappointed. Kazu insists that it’s the rule. This idea goes against Fumiko’s understanding of time-travel stories, which always seem to bear the risk of ruining the present by meddling with the past.
Fumiko slumps in her seat and recalls an article she’d once read about the café. It had outlined the rules: “The only people you can meet while in the past are those who have visited the cafe” and “There is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present.” Kazu explains that there’s also a time limit, and you can only time travel while sitting in one chair. Fumiko slumps her head and shoulders defeatedly on the counter. Hirai laughs at Fumiko’s misfortune.
Kazu’s cousin’s wife, Kei Tokita, enters. Kazu calls her “sis.” She mentions to Kazu and Hirai that she just had some routine tests done at the hospital. She disappears in the back room. Nagare Tokita, a large man who owns the café, pokes his head through the doorway. He greets Fusagi, a man reading a magazine in the corner. Nagare then tells Kazu to phone Kohtake, who has been looking for Fusagi. Hirai beckons Nagare over and asks about his wife’s tests: Kei has a weak heart and is always in and out of the hospital. Nagare says the tests were fine. He asks after Hirai’s sister, who runs the family’s inn alone. Hirai gets defensive and says she can’t go back to help her sister, saying it’s too late. She then pays and leaves, as if running from the conversation.
Kazu informs Nagare that Kohtake is coming. Nagare nods and asks Kazu to look after the place while he is in the back. Fusagi calls over for a refill. Fumiko asks again to be transported back to one week ago. Her nostrils flare with enthusiasm. Kazu explains that she can only time travel from one seat, which a pale woman in a white dress is currently sitting in. Fumiko goes to the woman and asks to switch spots, but the woman doesn’t reply, continuing to read her book. Kazu says she is a ghost. Fumiko can’t believe this, and she feels certain that the entire time-travel concept is a ploy to bring people to the café. Against Kazu’s warning, Fumiko grabs the woman’s arm and the ghost woman glares at her before a wailing reverberates through the café and the lights dim. Fumiko feels paralyzed. Kazu, smugly, says the ghost has cursed Fumiko. Fumiko is bewildered, sprawled on the floor. Kazu offers the ghost more coffee; when she accepts, Fumiko can feel her body getting lighter and the curse lifting. Fumiko realizes that if the ghost and curse are real, maybe going back in time is real too. Kazu says that Fumiko just has to wait for the seat, because the ghost uses the toilet once a day, and doesn’t differentiate between night and day. Fumiko resolves to sit and wait beyond regular opening hours, determined to get the ghost’s seat.
Kohtake enters in a nurse’s uniform. She sits with Fusagi, who almost doesn’t recognize her. She comments on the fact he’s been coming to the café a lot lately. He whispers that he’s waiting for the ghost’s seat. Fumiko eavesdrops, realizing that he was there first and so she can't jump the queue. Kohtake asks what he wants to go back in time for; he says it’s his secret. Kohtake convinces him that they should leave for today, and he can come back; after all, he can’t be sure the woman hasn’t already taken her toilet break. Kohtake assists him in paying, as Fusagi struggles to find his wallet and count out the money he owes.
Fumiko goes over the rules again in her head and then dozes off on the table. The narrator comments that Goro had told Fumiko about his dream future on their third date: being a gaming geek, he had always wanted to work for the same gaming company as his uncle. The company, TIP-Goro, required applicants to have five years of experience in the medical industry first to ensure they had the best programmers. What Fumiko hadn’t known was that TIP-Goro had a headquarters in America. Kazu wakes up Fumiko and points out that the ghost has left the table. Fumiko quickly moves to the seat. Kazu brings over a pot of coffee and explains that Fumiko must obey the time rule: drink her entire coffee in the past before it gets cold. Kazu says it will be her turn to be the ghost if the coffee goes cold. The woman currently serving as a ghost went back to meet her dead husband and stayed too long. Fumiko is anxious about the taste of the coffee, a drink she has never liked. Fumiko asks for the coffee. As Kazu pours, the steam rising from the cup becomes indistinguishable from a swirling vapor that fills the room. She clenches her fists and thinks of the first time she met Goro.
Although he was three years her junior, he looked older, like he was in his thirties. He was the youngest on their team but the most competent. When a bug threatened the launch of a new medical system, he disappeared from work and everyone suspected he was to blame. However, he turned up several days later, clearly not having slept, and announced he had located the bug. Fumiko fell in love with him when he suggested they have coffee to celebrate. The steam feeling leaves Fumiko’s limbs and she feels whole again. Goro is before her. Everything is as it was a week earlier, only their seats have changed with Fumiko in the spot where the ghost woman sat.
Goro mentions having little time before he has to leave. Fumiko sips the already lukewarm, bitter coffee. She scowls at Kazu before adding a bunch of sugar and milk to the coffee. As he gets up to leave, Fumiko attempts to speak the truth of her feelings, but instead reprimands him for having made his decision without consulting her. She swallows the rest of her coffee and the dizzy, shimmering sensation begins again. Goro says he never thought he was the right man for her. He touches the large burn scar running from his right eyebrow to his right ear and tells her that before her, he’d always thought women found him repulsive. She shouts that the scar never bothered her, but she has merged with the vapor and he doesn’t hear her.
As the past fades, Goro tells her to wait three years for him to return, at which point she can buy him a coffee. Fumiko returns to the café; the ghost woman tells her to leave her seat. Nothing feels different. Kazu asks her how it was. Fumiko wonders if, even though the present doesn’t change, the future still might. Kazu smiles for the first time and says that’s up to Fumiko. Fumiko pays her bill and leaves. The ghost woman in the dress smiles and closes her book. It is a novel titled The Lovers.
Analysis
In the opening pages of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi establishes the novel’s setting: a basement cafe in Tokyo called Funiculi Funicula—an allusion to the Neapolitan song of the same name, composed by Luigi Denza in 1880. In a nod to the novel’s origin as an award-winning stage play, Kawaguchi makes the entirety of the book’s events—aside from brief interludes of narrative backstory—take place within the confines of the small, magical cafe.
Subtitled The Lovers, the first of the book’s four parts is centered Fumiko, an attractive career-driven woman who is blindsided by the news that her boyfriend is leaving her to pursue his dream job in America. Used to getting what she wants, Fumiko doesn’t know how to deal with the grief of having lost the relationship. Kawaguchi begins the scene toward the end of their conversation, which depicts Goro as indifferent to Fumiko, who grows increasingly frustrated at his reticence and passivity. However, she holds out hope that the cafe’s unique ability to offer customers a chance to travel back in time will give her an opportunity to tell Goro how she really feels.
However, Fumiko quickly learns from Kazu, the waitress, that there is a peculiar set of conditions attached to the cafe’s time travel. Contrary to most time-travel narratives Fumiko has heard of, there is no possibility of changing the circumstances of the present, no matter what a person does in the past. Fumiko nonetheless is determined to go back a week to redo her conversation with Goro, even if it is, ostensibly, futile. However, there’s another catch: she must wait for the ghost woman in the dress to vacate her seat, which is the only seat in which a person can time travel.
Having introduced the major themes of regret, grief, and hope, Kawaguchi next brings in the theme of desperation. Too impatient to wait, Fumiko attempts to force the ghost from her chair. The narrative takes on a sinister tone when the irate ghost suddenly curses Fumiko by paralyzing her in place. Nonchalant as ever, Kazu simply pours the ghost a refill of coffee to free Fumiko from the curse. Adding to Fumiko’s sense of humiliation, Kazu, the other workers, and the regulars act unconcerned about and even amused by Fumiko’s distress.
Having finally got the opportunity when the ghost leaves for a toilet break, Fumiko travels back one week to revisit her disastrous final conversation with Goro. Knowing she can’t do anything to change her present, Fumiko struggles to overcome her pride and beg Goro to stay, as she wants to do; it seems that Fumiko is doomed to repeat the same devastating conversation.
However, as soon as she admits some vulnerability by expressing hurt over his sudden decision, Goro confesses that he has always felt insecure because of her superior looks. Goro also asks her to wait three years for him to pursue his dream job, at which point he may return to the relationship. Despite the uncertainty of the situation, Fumiko returns to the present with a new perspective. In an instance of situational irony, her expectation that time travel would be futile is undermined by the revelation that she may have influenced the course of her future. If she wants to be with Goro, all she has to do is sacrifice some pride and learn to be patient.
