41 pages • 1 hour read
Toshikazu KawaguchiTales From the Cafe
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Husband and Wife”
Kazu is pregnant, and Nagare tells her that he thinks she should keep the baby. They are immediately interrupted when the detective, Kiyoshi, returns to the café. He says he needs to go to the past to give his wife the necklace Kazu helped him pick out for her. Nagare asks why Kiyoshi needs to return to the past to do so.
To explain, Kiyoshi first says that when he visited the café a year earlier, he was baffled by why people would return to the past knowing they couldn’t change the present. He decided to investigate the café’s patrons, and of 41 who returned to the past, four had gone back to meet people who had died. He spoke to Hirai, who visited her sister after she died in a road accident in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, and Hirai told him that she decided that she must decide to be happy as a legacy for her sister. Kiyoshi decided then to visit his wife, who had died 30 years earlier. On the day she died, he was supposed to meet her to celebrate her birthday in the café. He was held up at work, and when his wife left the café alone at closing time, she was killed in a mugging.
Kazu announces that “due to certain circumstances, it is no longer possible to return to the past under [her] pouring” (212). The woman in white goes to the toilet, and Kiyoshi looks longingly around the café. He plans to leave, but Nagare tells him it is still possible to return to the past. He goes to get Miki, who is delighted that it is finally her turn to pour the coffee. Nagare asks Kiyoshi to humor Miki, who has just turned seven and is now able to pour the coffee and whose explanations of the rules are likely to be over-the-top. Kiyoshi agrees and finds the father’s sentiment heartwarming.
When he returns to the past, Kaname is there, pregnant at the time with Kazu. She tells him that she no longer pours the coffee because the power to return people to the past has been transferred to her unborn baby. Kiyoshi then realizes that Kazu is pregnant because she used the very same phrasing as Kaname. He thinks that Kazu does not seem happy about her pregnancy.
Kiyoshi’s late wife, Kimiko, enters the café. She doesn’t recognize him as a 60-year-old, and he tells her he has a present for her from her husband. She opens the necklace and begins crying. She tells Kiyoshi (whom she thinks is a stranger) that she thought her husband was planning to break up with her. He is shocked but sees why she might think so, given his behavior and distraction with his job.
He decides to reveal himself to Kimiko and tells her he has come from the future. He reveals that what he actually wanted to talk to her about that day was giving up being a detective. She recognizes him as her husband because he is wearing a hunting cap she gave him as a gift. She asks if he was happy with her, and he says that he was. He drinks his almost-cold coffee and returns to the present.
Kiyoshi tells Kazu he met her mother in the past and says Kaname looked happy. He tells her that her situation is like his due to her guilt over her mother’s death and his over his wife’s. He tells her that his investigations into the people who returned to the past from the café convinced him that he should be happy. He tells Kazu, “You’re allowed to be happy” (253).
Later, Kazu places her hand on her stomach and states that she will be happy. She sees her mother smile down at her novel, then disappear. She is replaced by an elderly gentleman, who picks up Kaname’s novel and begins reading. The novel concludes with the statement that “Kazu’s spring had just begun” (256).
Chapter 4 Analysis
The final chapter of the novel provides the resolution to Kazu’s character arc and the connection between several other narrative threads. Kiyoshi, who appeared in the first chapter of Tales from the Café, investigates those who choose to return to the past. As part of his findings, he speaks with Hirai, who travels to visit her late sister in Before the Coffee Gets Cold. She tells him, “I swore to myself that I would make sure that I was happy. My joy would be the legacy of my sister’s life” (210). Hearing this, Kiyoshi decides to free himself from his guilt over his wife’s death and chooses to be happy. This decision allows him to visit his wife in the past and obtain closure about her death and their marriage, something that eluded him for 30 years. In turn, he tells Kazu what he observed of Kaname in the past and his findings about happiness, which is the catalyst for her decision to be happy as well. Along with providing an emphatic resolution to the Happiness as a Choice theme, the inclusion of several characters from across the narrative in this chapter suggests the interconnectedness of human experience. The choice of happiness is not an isolated experience but something that applies across different times and situations.
Kazu’s character arc throughout the series, and in particular in this novel, is the move from self-imposed entrapment within the café as penance for her mother’s death to the choice to be happy and begin the next phase of her life. Her pregnancy is an important component of her progression. The contrast between Kaname’s happiness while pregnant and Kazu’s discontent at the beginning of Chapter 4 emphasizes the problem with her present state of mind. Whereas most characters change as a result of their time travel—despite their inability to affect the present by doing so—Kazu changes because of her role in others’ time travel. Kawaguchi suggests that her internal change will change her actions in the future, creating anticipation for the next volumes in the series. Kazu’s choice to be happy also has the unexpected consequence of releasing Kaname from her entrapment in the café. Therefore, the novel emphasizes the importance of internal change and choosing happiness for both personal fulfillment and honoring the dead.
The chapter also provides a conclusion to the Importance of Ritual theme. Throughout the novel, ritual functions as both a symptom of Kazu’s guilt and an indication of the importance of family and tradition. That Kazu is no longer able to pour the coffee due to her pregnancy foreshadows her freedom from the ritual of penance she has been enacting since her mother’s death. Pregnancy and motherhood also relate to Miki’s role in Chapter 4 as she takes on her role in the matrilineal tradition. She is delighted by the opportunity to pour the coffee and does so with childlike wonder: “[I]t was different with Miki. Her smiling expression was lovely, like a mother looking lovingly at her baby. Her smile radiated warmth and seemed out of place on a seven-year-old girl” (221). The ritual is thus given new life with the transition from Kazu to Miki. Miki’s happiness also provides closure for a narrative thread in Before the Coffee Gets Cold. Her mother, Kei, struggles with the fact that she will die in childbirth and wants to know her daughter will be happy without her. The association of ritual with maternal themes indicates the importance of matrilineal ties in the novel.
Nagare and Miki’s interactions in the chapter also emphasize the importance of their relationship. Kiyoshi observes that “[Nagare] spoke with a reverent tone. Finally, this day has arrived. His innocent little girl was going to take on a special role. Judging by his serious expression, he felt like a father giving away the bride at a wedding” (219). Nagare’s actions demonstrate his deep love for his daughter. The focus on their connection also provides circularity to the novel and emphasizes the importance of fatherhood since the novel starts with Gohtaro’s love for his adopted daughter. In connecting several previously disconnected narratives in Chapter 4, the novel emphasizes the interconnectedness of human experiences of love and loss.
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By Toshikazu Kawaguchi
