Book Review “Before Your Memory Fades” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

This is the third book of Kawaguchi’s “café” stories published in the US. These are set in contemporary Japan, and the situations are definitely Japanese.  It takes careful reading and thinking for an American to understand some of the problems and motivations of the characters.

Once again, the action centers in a café where it is possible to visit past.  Apparently there is now a satellite café in Tokyo where you can visit the future.  The mechanism is the same mysterious and the irrational rules are similar. 

The main rule is that it is not possible to change the past or present.  The other rule is that you cannot leave the chair in the café, and you can stay only until the coffee is cold. 

None of this makes sense, of course.  As the title of the book suggests, every trip changes the future, because the person changes and remembers the time travel. 

This set of stories is yet another collection of people with very Japanese problems.  Kawaguchi is particularly concerned with how the living deal with the death of a loved one.  There is so much sudden death in this cafe, you really have to wonder.  And, of course, its all extremely melodramatic stuff:  rare incurable diseases, only weeks to live though you look normal, no one knows you are dying unless you tell them, etc..

Through out the book, the café is talking about a book of questions that present dilemmas.  “If the world is going to end tomorrow, would you….”  There are simple choices, such do you as cash in a lottery win, or not?  There are also completely inscrutible ones, like, you are in the womb ready to be born.  Would you come out or stay in? (I’m pretty sure babies don’t get a choice.)

Over and over, the dead tell the survivors to be happy in life.  Stop mourning and moping, and live a good life.  This is what the dead want from you, and this is how you honor the dead.

This seems to be good advice, but it doesn’t seem necessary to go to such lengths (ghosts coming to you from the past or future) to figure it out. I can only assume that a lot of people in Japan remain depressed and helpless in the face of a death.

Given that so many of the characters have lost a loved one, we can’t expect a happy ending, so much as a happier ending.

Frankly, it all gets to be a bit much.

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1. Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before Your Memory Fades. Translated by G. Trousselot, New York, Hanover Square Press, 2022.

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