Tales From the Cafe

Nagare is the owner of the café and Miki’s father. He is a secondary/ensemble character in Tales from the Café. Physically, he is described as a very big, imposing man. He is attentive to detail and takes pride in his work. He insists on serving one particular type of coffee—mocha or Kilimanjaro beans—which he prepares with great care.

Nagare is also thoughtful and empathetic toward his customers. After Kyoko’s mother Kinuyo dies, Nagare includes Kinuyo’s favorite coffee in the bag with Kyoko’s order, and she is moved by his “thoughtful kindness.” He loves his daughter, Miki, deeply. He is very serious about her first experience of pouring the coffee, thinking of it like giving away a bride and asking Kiyoshi to “go along with” Miki’s over-the-top explanations of the rules to spare her feelings (218).

Miki is the young daughter of café owner Nagare. Her mother, Kei, died giving birth to her. Miki turns seven during the novel, which means that she becomes able to pour the coffee as a female member of the Tokita family. She is “camp” and has childlike affectations, like addressing herself as “moi” and Kazu as “Mistress.” She is happy and outgoing, singing and talking to the café’s patrons. However, when it is her turn to pour the coffee, she takes her task very seriously and concentrates on it. When she becomes upset, Miki can “quickly switch her mood, rather than letting it drag on” (44). Nagare observes that Miki is very much like her mother, Kei.

Kyoko is a regular in the café and a “full-time wife and mother” (23). She is a secondary character in the novel. Kyoko’s mother, Kinuyo (who dies during the novel), was Kazu’s art teacher, and both mother and daughter are invested in Kazu’s happiness. For example, when Kazu mentions having a boyfriend, Kyoko is delighted for her. She “probe[s] and dig[s] with various questions about Kazu’s boyfriend” (92), suggesting that her interest is genuine if somewhat intrusive. She is familiar with the other characters as well and speaks kindly to Miki when she enters the café. Kyoko is estranged from her brother, Yukio, who is angry that she didn’t tell him when their mother was in the hospital. She badly wants to fix things with him but doesn’t know how since she wouldn’t be able to change the present by traveling to the future.

Because the novel features four chapters that center around one individual’s time travel experience, each of those characters is a chapter protagonist but a secondary character in the novel as a whole. Gohtaro adopted a daughter, Haruka, after her parents died in a car accident. In Chapter 1, Gohtaro plans to visit Shuichi, an old friend and Haruka’s birth father, in the past. His impetus for visiting the past is Haruka’s upcoming wedding and his guilt over the fact that he never told her that Shuichi was her birth father. Gohtaro is portrayed as a devoted father but intends to distance himself from Haruka after telling her the truth because he feels she won’t forgive him for concealing the truth. He is emotional during his visit with Shuichi, demonstrating his empathy. He doesn’t realize he is crying throughout their interaction. Like both Kazu and Kiyoshi, his character arc is a movement from guilt to deciding (at Shuichi’s instruction) to be happy. As a result of his time in the past, he decides to continue acting as a father figure to Haruka.

Yukio Mita is the central figure in Chapter 2 when he goes to the past to visit his deceased mother, Kinuyo. He is an aspiring potter who has been living in poverty since trying to open his own studio and being conned by a supposed investor. He has always been “a serious type who would always persevere with a single task” and “[has] a warm personality and treat[s] everyone kindly” (111). He experiences a trajectory from despair to hope during his time travel. Initially, he intends to let his coffee get cold and die by suicide. After conversing with his mother, he drinks the coffee and returns to the present feeling changed and hopeful as “his despair at life had metamorphosed into hope. His outlook had changed unrecognizably” (149). His internal change changes the course of his life. In the next chapter, Kyoko reveals that Yukio has moved back to Tokyo and started a new job.

Kurata is the central character of Chapter 3. He travels from the past to the café’s present to visit his former girlfriend, to whom he lied about his cancer diagnosis. He works with systems engineer Fumiko (who appears in Before the Coffee Gets Cold as well) in the sales department of her company. He genuinely cares about Fumiko, and even when he is experiencing deep disappointment when he thinks Asami won’t come to meet him, he is genuinely pleased to learn that Fumiko married Goro. He cares genuinely about Asami as well, and he lied to her about his diagnosis and impending death to protect her feelings. He designs an elaborate plan with Fumiko to bring Asami to meet him only under certain circumstances that will enable him to find out if Asami is happy after his death.

He also has a unique perspective on loss and happiness and functions as a “teacher” character who articulates one of the novel’s themes of Happiness as a Choice. After Asami’s pregnancy loss, Kurata provided the advice that she must choose to be happy because doing so gave her lost child meaning.