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.
Symbols & Motifs
Coffee
Coffee symbolizes the connection between the everyday and the magical. One of the key symbols across the series, coffee is an example of something that is simultaneously quotidian and supernatural. As a whole, the series subverts tropes of magical realism that deal with time travel. Rather than a wild, unexpected circumstance in which the entire future could be changed, time travel in Kawaguchi’s work is controlled and comparatively banal because of its specific set of rules. Coffee is an effective representation of this interplay between normal and magical. On one hand, coffee is the substance that enables café patrons to travel through time. The ritual of coffee pouring is significant and specific: Only female members of the Tokita family who are older than seven years of age can pour the coffee, it is brewed carefully and presented in the same silver receptacle, and the rules for time travel are recited. When the coffee is poured, the recipient travels back in time, and they must finish it before it gets cold, so they do not die.
At the same time, coffee is also just coffee in the novel. The café serves primarily non-magical coffee to its patrons, and only those who sit in a specific seat travel through time. Kawaguchi adds layers to this dichotomy between the everyday and the magical by emphasizing the attention that café staff, particularly Nagare, pay even to “normal” coffee. Nagare’s preferred method of brewing coffee is by dripper, and the café serves only mocha coffee beans, which have “a unique blend of pleasant aroma and acid-sour taste” (109). These details are important because they elevate something banal to something magical, even in the case of coffee that does not transport its drinker through time.
Clocks
Clocks symbolize the variability and slipperiness of time throughout the novel. They are a noticeable element of the café setting. The clocks are antique, like most of the other décor. Most significantly, they show three different times, regardless of attempts to correct them. This parallels the time travel experiences in the novel, which present a nonlinear idea of time. Characters can go either forward or backward in time, across seasons and times of day. More importantly, while it is not possible to change the present, characters themselves change because of their interactions with people in the past or future. The three mismatched clocks in the café thus symbolize the temporal ambiguity that is one of the novel’s key concerns.
Seasons
References to seasons occur throughout the novel, and different chapters take place in different seasonal settings. For example, the second chapter includes an autumnal motif: The sound of bell crickets heralds the season and is referenced in the lyrics to the song Miki sings (“Chirping throughout the long autumn night. Oh, what fun to hear this insect symphony!” (87)). Kawaguchi often provides references to seasons in general, second-person terms. For example, Chapter 2 begins with: “Nothing makes you think, Ah, autumn has arrived, more than hearing the chirp-chirp of the suzumushi, the bell cricket” (85), and Chapter 4 starts with “People tend to feel happy when spring arrives, especially after a cold winter” (201). Kawaguchi therefore associates seasons with universal human experiences.
Seasons symbolize the cyclical nature of life and the personal changes people undergo. The conclusion of the novel focuses on the coming of spring in reality and metaphorically in Kazu’s life, and it concludes with: “Seasons flow in a cycle. Life too, passes through difficult winters […] Kazu’s spring had just begun” (256). Seasons, therefore, indicate the change Kazu has experienced: deciding to be happy after experiencing years of guilt.
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By Toshikazu Kawaguchi
