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 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Mothers and Sons”
Miki sings in the café, and Nagare is losing patience with her repetitive song. The other patrons include Kyoko, a regular, and Kiyoshi Manda, a homicide detective.
Kyoko questions Kazu about a man she saw her with. She is very excited to learn that Kazu has a boyfriend. She asks lots of questions and says her interest is because her late mother, Kinuyo, taught Kazu art and was very fond of her. Kinuyo always hoped that Kazu would find love and happiness.
Kiyoshi overhears part of their conversation about shopping for a birthday present for Kazu’s boyfriend’s mother. He interjects and asks for advice on buying a birthday present for his wife, for whom he has never bought a gift. Kazu suggests a necklace, and he is grateful for the advice.
Kazu asks about Kyoko’s brother, Yukio. Kyoko feels guilty because Kinuyo died recently, and at her request, Kyoko hadn’t told Yukio that she was in the hospital. Kyoko would like to go back to the past to make things right but realizes that is not possible given the café’s rules: Nothing she does will change the present.
When Kazu is alone in the café in the evening, Yukio arrives. He says he’d like to go back in time to when his mother was still alive. Kazu asks him why he didn’t go to her funeral and tells him Kyoko blames herself for him missing Kinuyo’s final moments. Yukio privately thinks about his dire financial situation—an ostensible supporter of his pottery studio conned him and left him in debt. He leaves the café to contact his sister when the woman in the white dress goes to the bathroom.
Later, Yukio returns to travel to the past and see his mother. Kinuyo enters the café, supported by her grandson, and Yukio is struck by how frail she seems. He lies about his circumstances, suggesting that he is eating well and that money is no issue. He returns money she gave him to get started years earlier, which he could never bring himself to use.
Kinuyo gestures to the long spoon in his coffee cup and tells him it is a timer that Kazu puts in the coffee any time someone goes to the past to visit someone who has died. Yukio is upset that he has inadvertently told his mother that she is going to die, and he blames Kazu. Kinuyo tells her son that Kazu was the one who poured the coffee for her mother—the woman in white—when she was seven years old.
Yukio thinks about waiting until the coffee gets cold, planning to die by suicide and stay with his mother. Realizing this, Kinuyo expresses her love for her son and asks him to return to the future. He realizes that even though his mother is already dead in the future, he would still hurt her by dying because parental feelings do not change. He drinks the coffee and returns to the future, deciding to “live for [his] mother who never stopped wishing for [his] happiness, right until the very end” (148). He thanks Kazu and realizes that he has changed. He now feels hopeful.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Each chapter in the novel follows a similar progression. They open broadly with a general observation about life or a macro view of the people in the café at the time. For example, Chapter 2 opens with, "Nothing makes you think, Ah, autumn has arrived, more than hearing the chirp-chirp of the suzumushi, the bell cricket” (85). In addition to the symbolism of seasons as life cycles and personal change, the descriptions of nature further root the novel in its Japanese context by referencing a specific insect. Moving from the general to the specific within each chapter echoes the experience of walking into the café and gradually zooming in to the chapter’s protagonist. As the narrative enters the café, the chapters include specific descriptions of the character who intends to time travel and their backstory. At the same time, Kawaguchi also includes details about the café staff and other regulars who are present. Each chapter concludes with Kazu and Kaname alone in the café after everyone else has left. This process of zooming in has two main effects. First, it emphasizes the connection between broad, abstract ideas about life and the small details of existence. For example, the quote above evokes meditations on what the change of seasons literally feels like and what it symbolizes more abstractly. Second, the form of the novel emphasizes the centrality of Kazu and Kaname’s story to Tales from the Café’s plot and themes. Even in these early chapters, their consistent presence foreshadows Kazu’s emotional growth.
This section of the novel includes a discussion of what it means to give gifts. Kawaguchi connects gift-giving with the transitory nature of time. For example, the description of Kazu’s ritual of replacing her mother’s novel every time she finishes it includes: “When people choose presents hoping to delight the recipient, they have in mind that special person’s reaction. And as they do, they often find that time has suddenly got away from them” (104). Like the motif of coffee, the inclusion of gift-giving concretizes the abstract concept of time travel. It blends an everyday event—drinking coffee or giving a gift—with the supernatural. The chapter also includes an addition to the rules of the café and its time travel abilities: “The annoying rules did not stop there. The journey through time can only be attempted once and once only. It is possible to take photos. Presents can be given and received” (117). Actual gifts appear several times throughout the narrative as well. For example, this chapter includes Kiyoshi asking Kazu for advice about a gift for his wife; in the last chapter of the novel, he travels to the past to give her the necklace Kazu recommended. In addition to emphasizing the connection between the everyday and the magical, gifts are tangible representations of interpersonal relationships and affection.
This chapter is important to the novel’s themes of Happiness as a Choice and Changing the Future Versus Changing the Self as well. Whereas Chapter 1 features Shuichi’s instruction to Gohtaro to “be happy,” Chapter 2 includes a more complex, high-stakes version of the idea of happiness as a choice. Yukio contemplates allowing the coffee to get cold as a way to die by suicide, raising the stakes of his story. Ultimately, he decides that he can honor his mother’s love for him by choosing to become more hopeful. When Yukio returns to the present, he thinks about how “The world hasn’t changed, I have” (149). Kawaguchi suggests that while it is not possible to change the present, traveling to the past can inspire personal change. Such internal transformation means that people are likely to take different actions, thereby changing their futures, a twist on the typical time travel trope whereby time travelers inadvertently alter the present.
The chapter ends with a reference to the song Miki is singing when it begins: “‘Chirping throughout the long autumn night. Oh, what fun to hear this insect symphony!’ Kazu sang to herself softly. As if in response, lin-lin lin-lin, chirped the bell cricket. The quiet autumn night wore slowly on…” (151). While the chapter starts with a light, humorous tone as Miki is singing and joking with her father, it concludes with heaviness: Kazu reflects on seasons while she sings the same song alone. The circularity demonstrates the fact that each chapter functions as a self-contained entity, like a short story or novella, while also working as part of the overall narrative.
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