Three’s Company

Reviewing three upcoming novellas to explore the simple charm and connection in contemporary Japanese short fiction.

Amidst all of TikTok’s glories and tribulations rests a considerable community of readers who share and spread their joy of books under the same tag of #BookTok. Its value has been called into question before in this publication, but it appeared to have a need to be revisited. With the app’s viral nature, oftentimes, certain books will begin to spread through the community, and, soon enough, “must-reads” are popping up on everyone’s For You pages. Among these “must-read” lists I’ve seen, one book kept catching my attention: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. With the premise of a time-traveling cafe, Before the Coffee Gets Cold certainly seemed interesting.

As I looked into it, Kawaguchi’s book fell into a niche of contemporary Japanese short fiction, in which a select group of works continuously appeared in up-and-coming Japanese literature lists beside Before the Coffee Gets Cold. The authors of these works were compared to the likes of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto, both of which have cemented themselves in the contemporary Japanese fiction genre, so, naturally, I was intrigued. I decided to pick a handful of these short fiction works and see for myself what all the talk was about.

My first short fiction work of choice was, surprisingly, not Before the Coffee Gets Cold but Durian Sukegawa’s Sweet Bean Paste, since it simply sounded more interesting to me. At the end of the book, Sukegawa writes, in his author’s note, “Some lives are all too brief, while others are a continual struggle. I couldn’t help thinking that it was a brutal assessment of people’s lives to employ usefulness to society as a yardstick by which to measure their value.” Centered around an unlikely friendship between a troubled ex-con who passes time working at a confectionary store making dorayaki, a Japanese dessert of two castella pancake patties filled with red bean paste, and an elderly woman with disfigured hands and a passion for making amazing sweet bean paste, Sweet Bean Paste communicates the exact message that Sukegawa articulates in his author’s note. As their friendship blossoms, these two characters learn that “all are equal in their relationship to the universe,” regardless of their struggles in the past or how “beneficial” they are to society.

Sweet Bean Paste is a very simple novel in its plot and its writing, but it carries a greater philosophical message. However, it was too simple. With somewhat-flat characters and an unassuming plot, there wasn’t much in the novel that struck me as a good novel. A good, pensive message, yes, but maybe not a good novel. However, its simplicity makes it very palatable, which I can imagine makes Sweet Bean Paste an easy read for anyone who’s looking for one and enjoys philosophical musings on life.

When I finally started Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I felt its mystical elements immediately. Set in a cafe that allows its customers to travel back in time (as long as they follow a few rules and return before their coffee gets cold), this short novel tells four stories of time-traveling customers and explores the characters and what they want to change. The stories explore regrets and what it feels like to be reunited with loved ones they’ve lost in the past. Like Sweet Bean Paste, Before the Coffee Gets Cold isn’t centered around plot (though one may expect a time travel story to be so), its story is moreso driven by the relationships of the characters and their personal emotional journeys. Kawaguchi does a good job at setting the stage of the cafe and giving it a sense of discreet magic.

When I say “setting the stage,” I mean it literally, perhaps to the detriment of the novel. Kawaguchi is a playwright and he adapted Before the Coffee Gets Cold from a play of his by the same name. Because of this, the novel reads somewhat awkwardly—something I originally chalked up to anticipated translation clumsiness but now reconsider as a side effect of its theatrical predecessor. It lacks the smooth flow that I usually cherish in my favorite books, but it’s not overwhelmingly unpleasant in a way that takes away from the story. For someone who doesn’t place importance on the writing style, Before the Coffee Gets Cold could be easily enjoyable.

At this point, I was beginning to feel like a joyless being who found no significance in simple and cute novels about life and the people who live it. I had finished two of the some of the most praised contemporary Japanese short fiction works in the Goodreads community—the ones that had multiple 5-star reviews under their belts—and, frankly, I wasn’t buying it. The novels’ sweet sentimentality came off as too overt to be compelling in its charm, like the authors are insisting on getting a certain message across while sacrificing the aspects of what makes a good novel a good novel.

I had one more work to read, the shortest of all of them: Mieko Kawakami’s Ms Ice Sandwich. The narrator, a young boy, is infatuated with a woman at the supermarket with ice-blue eye makeup who packs sandwiches into bags and returns to the store every day as he deals with changes in his family and begins a friendship with a classmate. Young children as narrators can be tricky, because the author attempts to walk the line between not being too philosophical for a child and not sounding too kindergarten. But I think Ms Ice Sandwich does it very well. The way Kawakami (or perhaps, the translator, Louise Heal Kawai) structures her sentences retains the style and literacy of an adult narrator, while erasing any doubt in the readers’ minds that our narrator is certainly a child. The writing is innocently charming without being childish, and the narrator has a strong voice.

When I began reading Ms Ice Sandwich, I was, unfortunately, expecting it to fall short of significance, just like Sweet Bean Paste and Before the Coffee Gets Cold. But as I got a few pages in, I could tell this novella already felt different to the other two––in a good way. By the end of the novella, we saw our narrator traverse through the emotional currents that accompany growing up, and we saw him come of age in the midst of all the changes around him. It was endlessly familiar and frustrating. It surprised me, honestly, because Ms Ice Sandwich was one of the less talked about short fiction works (BookTok has yet to touch it, I discovered it while clicking around at Goodreads’s “Readers also enjoyed”) and yet, it was the strongest one I had read––it was the good novella I was looking for.

With my small peek into contemporary Japanese short fiction, I attempt to piece together what is getting this niche genre recognition and praise. The main aspect I recognize that differs from western literature is that, occasionally, as I read, the thought would pop up in my mind: what’s the point? But, as unsatisfactory as it might be, the point is their almost lack of objectives. There’s an indefinite feeling in these slice-of-life works, which is perhaps what makes them so convincing in their themes of the profoundness in the mundane. They don’t need intense plot points and over-exaggerated interactions, just the humanity of their characters. This may not be for everyone and has a risk of being poorly executed, but when it’s done well, we’re left with a heartwarming story that lets us appreciate what it means to be alive with the people around us.

When discussing contemporary Japanese short fiction, the monumental work that comes to mind is Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto––a classic, of sorts, in the genre. The authors of the three works I read have been lightly dubbed “the next Yoshimotos” and, frankly, the only author I see on that path is Kawakami. She may not be there yet (I still think that Kitchen stands out among all of the novels and the novellas) but there is definitely something in Ms Ice Sandwich that grasps the technique of narrating life’s confounding and hopeful glory in a certain sweet simplicity that makes contemporary Japanese short fiction so special.