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Chapter 4
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Control and Acceptance
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, patrons at a Tokyo café have the option to sit in a seat normally occupied by a ghost—which will allow them to travel to the past or future for a brief period of time. As several characters time travel, the novel emphasizes the fact that while the past and its bearing on the present is beyond one’s power to change, everyone can control their own future choices…
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Love and Relationships
Before the Coffee Gets Cold spotlights a variety of interpersonal relationships: romantic, friendly, and familial. Consistently, characters in the novel find such connections transformative. The novel shows that people reach their full potential and find contentment by forming close and supportive bonds with others, and by going out of their way to show their loved ones they care. For example, Fusagi, who never learned to read or write beyond an elementary level, is driven…
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Honesty and Disclosure
For nearly all the characters in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, dishonesty or reticence hinders both their relationships with others and their own happiness. The novel suggests that in order to move past one’s problems, a person has to be honest and forthcoming with oneself and their loved ones. For instance, the novel eventually reveals that Goro was never able to allow himself to feel true love or contentment in his relationship with Fumiko…
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Grief and Loss
As a novel that includes the death or illness of several major characters, Before the Coffee Gets Cold offers up a comforting idea: loss, it suggests, is unavoidable, but grief is nevertheless tolerable when people have support systems in place to feed their resilience. Kei’s memories of her father Michinori’s death provide an example of the book’s philosophy on this topic. She recalls that when Michinori died, she was only nine, and she…
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