To Time Travel or Not

What if you were allowed to go back to the past and alter the course of your life, would you take it? If yes, do you have any idea which part of your past you want to go back to? It cannot be denied that there are parts of our past that we want to return to. There are past actions and intersections – moral, emotional, even psychological – we must choose that have consequences that reverberate in the present. We are curious about what would have happened had we chosen the other way around. we have past actions that we want to go back to. We want to know if things would have been different had we taken the other course. Some regrets linger as a result of the choices we made. The passage of time does not reduce the potency of these regrets. But then again, this gives rise to different but equally seminal questions. If choosing the other course does change the landscape of our lives, are these changes the ones that we wanted? Are we better for it or worse for it?

The reality is that it is basically impossible to travel back in time or perhaps even to the future. Nevertheless, the idea of time travel has fascinated us for decades. Science fiction has cultivated the idea, giving rise to movies and literary works that tickle the imagination of many a reader and spectator. Popular science fiction writer H.G. Wells popularized the concept of time travel by mechanical means through his 1895 novel The Time Machine. An even earlier idea of time travel in literature was introduced by beloved writer Charles Dickens through his timeless novella A Christmas Carol (1843). Since then, time travel lore has expanded and included time slips, time reverses, and even time loops. Among popular literary works that feature time travel include H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time (1936), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979), Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962), and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003).

Time travel is also featured in the vast Japanese literary landscape. Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 時をかける少女 (1965 to 1966, Toki o Kakeru Shōjo; trans. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time) is one of the earliest works of Japanese literature to explore time travel. Adding his voice to this collection of time travel lore is Toshikazu Kawaguchi (川口 俊和) with his 2015 novel コーヒーが冷めないうちに (Kohi ga Samenai Uchi ni). In 2019, the novel was made available to Anglophone readers through a translation by Geoffrey Trousselot; the book’s English title was Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It was also adapted into a film called Café Funiculi Funicula in 2018. Before pursuing a career in writing, Kawaguchi was an acclaimed playwright, and the book was adapted from a commercially successful play of the same title. The play-form of the novel won the 2013 Suginami Drama Festival prize.

She had quite a pretty face, a pale complexion and narrow almond-shaped eyes, yet her features were not memorable. It was the type of face that if you glanced at it, closed your eyes and then tried to remember what you saw, nothing would come to mind. In a word, she was inconspicuous. She had no presence.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold takes the readers to a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop called café Funiculi Funicula. First opened in 1874, Funiculi Funicula is situated in a windowless basement in a narrow back alley in Tokyo. Despite the passage of time, the café was able to maintain its charm. It only has nine seats propped with dim sepia lamps and three antique clocks that tell different times. In today’s generation, the café is what one would call Instagrammable, draped with an air of mystique and intrigue. The café’ is run by chef Nagare Tokita, and his cheerful wife Kei. An enigmatic young waitress named Kazu Tokita performs the ritual coffee ceremony. For sure, Funiculi Funicula is no ordinary café. Beyond the ambiance and its coffee, the café offers the chance to anyone who sits in a particular seat and orders and drinks a special cup of coffee to travel back in time to relive a particular moment in their lives.

The opportunity to time travel, however, is not infinite. There are rules prospective customers must strictly adhere to. First, they can only travel back to the café. They can only meet people who have already been or will one day be at the café. The use of the seat is also subject to limit. It can cater to only one customer per day. The only time it becomes available is when the resident female ghost who occupies the seat gets up to visit the bathroom. A caveat is immediately issued upon a prospective time traveler’s inquiry: while they can travel back to the past, changing their actions won’t change the present. The most important rule, however, is that the time travelers must return to the present “before the coffee gets cold,” hence, the book’s title; the coffee usually gets cold after about an hour. Time travel would naturally pique anyone’s interest but the limitations of the café made several prospective time travelers apprehensive and some turned down the opportunity without further ado.

Nevertheless, there are still some whose curiosity made them gravitate toward traveling back to the past. Before the Coffee Gets Cold charts the time-traveling adventures of four individuals, each haunted by their past actions; their individual stories and motivations to travel back in the past comprise the novel. The first story, The Lovers, introduces Fumiko Kiyokawa, a career-driven and attractive medical IT director. A week earlier, Fumiko was at the café with her boyfriend, Goro Katada. Having been in a relationship for two years already, Fumiko was hoping that Goro would finally drop the big question. Rather, he dropped her a news that she was not expecting at all. She was blindsided and distraught. Fumiko wanted to redress the harm done to her. Even when Kazu gave her a caveat, she still opted to travel into the not-so-distant past and even tried to force the female ghost to vacate the seat.

Café regular Kohtake takes the torch in the second story, Husband and Wife. Already in her late middle ages, Kohtake is married to Fusagi. Unfortunately, three years before, Fusagi was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He was losing his memory and recently, he lost all traces of memory he had with Kohtake. When Kohtake learned that Fusgai wrote her a letter before fully losing his memory, Kohtake resolved to travel back in time to learn what the letter contained. The third story, The Sisters, also features a café regular, Hirai. Hirai’s younger sister, Kumi once visited the café and wrote a letter for her older sister. Fearing that her younger sister would berate her for shirking familial duties in exchange for living a liberal life in Tokyo, Hirai refused to meet with Kumi. Unfortunately, on her way back home from Tokyo, Kumi perished in an accident, leaving her older sister brokenhearted. In her grief, Hirai visited the café to, like Fumiko and Kohtake, travel to the past.

Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability. It is much easier to conceal sadness from a stranger, or from someone you don’t trust.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Time travel, however, is not exclusively traveling to the past. The last story, Mother and Child, deviates from the flow of the previous three stories. Rather than traveling to the past, the time traveler traveled to the future. The heart of the story is no less than Kei, the café owner’s wife. Her bubbly demeanor belied her physical struggles due to her weak heart; she avoided vigorous physical activities. Ever since she was a child, Kei has been in and out of the hospital. In fact, it was while recovering from a serious accident in the hospital that Kei first met Nagare. In the present, she learns that she is pregnant. Her pregnancy was both a blessing and a curse; a curse because it overburdened her heart. The doctors also reported that should Kei push for childbirth, there could be devastating consequences. Cognizant of the risks and her chances, Kei travels to the future to seek answers and satisfy her own curiosity.

Time travel, palpably, is the main thread that ties all the stories together. This magical element is a crucible from which Kawaguchi probed into a plethora of subjects. The magical elements are intricately woven together with an exploration of human conditions. As each of the time travelers exhibited, each of us has a cross to bear. We soldier on in our lives despite the odds. However, questions linger, filling our minds and perpetually tickling our imaginations. We are filled with quandaries and worse, regrets. We are ever curious about the what-ifs and the what-could-have-beens. We are filled with regrets and we can never seem to move on from these questions that keep on appearing at the most inopportune times. It is this facet of the story – particularly the characters’ plights – that makes the characters relatable.

For sure, in the stories of Fumiko, Kohtane, Kei, and Hirai we can find pieces of ourselves. The characters’ concerns reflect our own. Their grief, worries, concerns, and even their desperation mirror ours. There is also desperation, the unquenchable desire to get to the bottom of things. Their universal experiences were vividly captured by Kawaguchi. In capturing their experiences with his unflinching gaze, Kawaguchi is also inviting the readers to reflect on their own regrets and the words that they left unsaid. The characters’ poignant experiences, coupled with their profound realization following experiences, somehow provide us a sense of peace. The past is already cast in stone and we cannot change it. However, we can still find meaning in them. In doing so, we can find a way to move forward. Funiculi Funicula’s brand of time travel aims not to alter the present but to provide the time traveler a different perspective from which to understand the past and how it resonated in the present.

People don’t see things and hear things as objectively as they might think. The visual and auditory information that enters the mind is distorted by experiences, thoughts, circumstances, wild fancies, prejudices, preferences, knowledge, awareness, and countless other workings of the mind.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

On the other side of the spectrum, we are provided with glimmers of hope from making peace with these regrets and words left unsaid; their stories brimmed with hope. Traveling to the past and/or the future, despite knowing that the present won’t change, gave the characters hope they were not expecting. It did not provide the resolution they were hoping for but it gave them something to look forward to. They find answers that help in their own healing. The novel also captured the beauty of connections and community. The café symbolizes community and friendship. The café is the most palpable allegory of community where friendship thrives and connections between unsuspecting individuals are established and built. It was heartwarming how the characters, both the customers and the café staff slowly built rapport and eventually became part of each others’ lives. As if to underline connectivity, the complexities of families were also underscored in the story. 

Without irony, the intricacies of memory were subtly woven into the lush tapestry of the story. Fusagi’s Alzheimer’s disease was the most direct reference to memory. However, memories also permeate the lives of the other characters, may it be a past they chose to move away from or a vignette they treasure. Uncertainties also pervade the lives of the characters, hence, their desire to reexamine the past or peek into the future. They can only take lessons from these experiences and use them as platforms to improve the present. Another important element in the story is sacrifice. We make sacrifices for our loved ones. We make sacrifices for ourselves. But at what cost? Over the course of their lives, the characters made sacrifices to be who they are today but questions linger if these sacrifices were worth it. They give rise to the what-ifs and the what-could -have-beens.

In his debut novel, Kawaguchi was resplendent in capturing human concerns through his characters. He complimented it with his accessible writing although he has the propensity to be repetitive. Nevertheless, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is fueled by the relatability of its characters. Their experiences resonate universally. Their concerns and quandaries many can relate to. The time travel element added a layer of intrigue. It is a novel that brimmed with regrets about the past, words left unsaid, and actions unacted upon. In between, grief, sacrifices, unconditional love, and the power of connection and community were highlighted by the four stories. The past and memories loom and sure, there is nothing we can do to alter the past. The novel underscores literature’s capacity to underscore shared realities to provoke introspection. Kawaguchi reminds us that we can find meaning in the past, heal from it, and even move forward. Hope still beacons.

Doing things differently from everyone else would normally antagonize those making sure no one went against the grain, but no one ever thought that way with Kei. She was always everyone’s friend; she had that sort of effect on people.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Book Specs

Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Translator (from Japanese): Geoffrey Trousselot
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Publishing Date: 2020 (2015)
No. of Pages: 272
Genre: Literary, Science Fiction

Synopsis

If you could go back, who would you want to meet?

In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee – the chance to travel back in time.

Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.

Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?

About the Author

Toshikazu Kawaguchi (川口 俊 和) was born in Ibaraki, Osaka, Japan in 1971. Before pursuing a career as a writer, Kawaguchi first worked as a playwright and director. He co-founded the theatrical group Sonic Snail, where he wrote and directed several plays. As a playwright, his works include COUPLE, Sunset Song, and Family Time.

In 2015, Kawaguchi published his debut novel, コーヒーが冷めないうちに (Kohi ga Samenai Uchi ni). It was an adaptation of his eponymous play that premiered in Japan in 2010 and won the grand prize at the 10th Suginami Drama Festival. In 2019, the novel was translated into English as Before the Coffee Gets Cold. It was an international bookseller and established Kawaguchi’s stature as a rising literary star. Sequels to the first book were published eventually: Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe (2017),  Before Your Memory Fades (2018), Before We Say Goodbye (2021), and Before We Forget Kindness (2024).