Seeing author of global bestseller Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi (川口俊和), at the Melbourne Writers Festival (MWF), I knew would be entertaining. Likely fascinating. But the fact remained—I didn’t really like his book.

I read it a few years ago, as I began working in bookstores and was excited to know my way around bestsellers. The concept is enamouring—a little café tucked away in Tokyo, home to a seat that allows you to travel back in time. There are many caveats: you can only take your seat when its usual strange occupant goes to the bathroom; you cannot leave the seat whilst you go back in time; whilst travelling in time you can only interact with café patrons; you cannot change the past; and you must return before your coffee gets cold.

In theory, this was a lovely, unique concept that would weave together the lives of many different café-goers and café staff in moving and devastating ways. In practice, however, I just couldn’t get behind it. The style, the plot, the characters—something ate away at me as I tried to empathise with the book. The writing felt clunky, the dialogue disjointed, and the storylines weary. I remember finishing the novel at the State Library of Victoria, standing on the corner of La Trobe Street and Swanston Street and thinking, “Hmm, I wonder why I feel unsatisfied?”

I soon realised I was not as unsatisfied as I was unsettled, uprooted and disgruntled. The women in Kawaguchi’s book, to put it simply, felt unrealistic. Like a paper cutout of what a woman should be. To name a few examples, we can look at time-travelling cafe patrons Fumiko, Hirai, and Kei. Fumiko is consumed by a conversation with her career-oriented ex-boyfriend, concluding she should have sacrificed her career as a medical technician to support his game developing job. Hirai, an independent business owner, is guilted into “learning to love” her family business after her sister died. Kei, with multiple health issues, elects to become pregnant and birth a child, knowing she will die in childbirth, to fulfill her purpose of being a mother—despite being aware her daughter will never know her.

Upon reflection, the main issue I had was with the traditionalist undertones, or overtones, depending on how kind I’m being. The underlying motivations for the women of Before the Coffee Gets Cold exists to encourage a uniform view of the ways women think and desire. What I resonated with the most was the universal feelings of grief and existentialism that, to his credit, Kawaguchi managed to capture in singular clarity. It wasn’t bad, but neither did I leave it feeling impressed. Which, after years of being told I go too easy on media and books, I have learned means I did not like it.

So, imagine my surprise when I heard Kawaguchi speak at the MWF and I am laughing, leaning forward in my seat, ready to recall the underwhelming book with joy and intrigue. First, Kawaguchi is a humble, honest, and witty man. As I sat, catching snippets of his humour in Japanese, only able to fully understand him once his musings were translated, I was pleasantly surprised at his command of an audience and cheeky-yet-polite demeanour.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold was originally a play, later becoming Kawaguchi’s first foray into novels. The reason for the book’s stilted, awkward writing is immediately clear when readers learn of its origins on the stage. In reminiscing on the play’s creation, Kawaguchi vindicated high school students everywhere who had been asked to “explain the significance of the ghostly woman in white.” With a bashful smile, the author explained that an actress in the play refused to come to rehearsal, so they put her in a chair and told her to stay quiet. Thus, ‘mysterious’ ghost lady was born. That this silly theatre solution birthed such a key character tickled me.

These moments of mischievous honesty became a theme throughout the talk. Kawaguchi had joked he accidentally put his awkwardness into his book, explaining the reason his characters struggle to communicate is because he is, in fact, the same. This was endearing and perhaps amusingly at odds with his affability.

When asked for the motivation to continue writing, Kawaguchi said he would keep at it as long as the sales keep coming in. Laughter rippled through the audience. He confided that early in life, he was super short on cash. “Let me tell you how broke I was,” said Kawaguchi, shifting in his chair. “I used to live on 200 yen a week.” For reference, that is roughly twenty Australian dollars.

I couldn’t help but be touched by his image of loss. Even when I read Before the Coffee Gets Cold, it redeemed itself in the gentle pragmatism that it applied to grief. I could recognise this as I read it. Then, a year after reading it, I lost a good friend. I was sitting in this event, listening to him speak, and it was as if I had locked eyes with him in the dark.

“You can’t go back in time and save someone who you lost because they died, it’s not going to happen. I lost my dad when I was ten, and there’s no changing that. But I love to think that if he could see me now, after all these years; I’ve become a novelist and I’m doing this, he would be so amazed and so happy. That would make me so happy. That’s the sort of change that you can achieve.”

Suddenly, I am finding my opinion broader, my doubt softer, and I am imagining, as I write this, sitting down with my friend one last time. I am imagining looking him in the eyes and speaking to him, softly, with the calm cadence of the man onstage. Whatever qualms I have with his writing, Kawaguchi has tapped into an undying, universal resource: regret. Rather than sit in it, he has, with his novel’s simple, delineating clarity, crafted an inspiring worldview.

“If you divide everything into the past and the future,” he proposes, “You’re dividing everything into regret and hope. Hope drives us forward.” Without hope, he would not have written this bestselling novel. Without hope, he would not be sitting on the other side of the world, giving an interview at a writing festival.

After his talk I speak to him.

Our conversation is in Japanese. I introduce myself and tell him that Before the Coffee Gets Cold is a great achievement. He smiles and inclines his head, thanking me and returning my formalities. As he signs my copy I ask if I am correct in saying he’s ‘from’ Osaka. I realise as he responds I’ve used a Japanese term for ‘from’ that will come across as peculiar. He clarifies he was born there, but he now lives in Tokyo to write. I say how great that must be. My time is up, and he grins ear to ear for a photo, even though I am at the end of the line and he must have done this hundreds of times already. He looks me in the eye as we say goodbye, remembering my name.

Here lies the source of my mixed feelings: I didn’t like his book, but I really liked his talk. I very much admire him as a person.

I recall Kawaguchi’s words: “I’m trying to make it so that the empathy that you feel when you read it would make sense to someone thirty years ago, or thirty years hence.”

Despite my misgivings about style and representation, I believe that Kawaguchi will be able to look back in thirty years and think, “I have achieved my aim.” Before the Coffee Gets Cold has stayed with me because of my frustrations, yes, but also because Kawaguchi, as he demonstrated in his talk, expresses the ambiguities of grief and regret that haunt us all. He has reached out to the world with a personal tribute to loss, and the world has responded with appreciation.