Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Tales from the Café

The man had asked a very strange question. But Kazu had answered it matter-of-factly. Many customers came to the cafe out of sheer curiosity after hearing its legend. Kazu had grown so used to such conversations that now they were like small talk for her.

‘I see…’ replied the man, sounding uninterested.

Kazu started to prepare the coffee in front of him. Ordinarily, she used the siphon. The special feature about coffee brewed by siphon is that boiling hot water in the bottom flask noisily bubbles and rises to the funnel, where it becomes coffee. Then the liquid drops back down into the top flask. Kazu enjoyed watching the siphon brewing in action.

However, for some reason, today she didn’t choose to use the siphon but instead brought the drip-coffee equipment from the kitchen. She brought the mill out with her as well, obviously planning to grind the beans at the counter.

The brewing method of using the dripper was the cafe owner Nagare’s speciality. The filter is set in the dripper and hot water is gently poured over the grounds to extract the coffee bit by bit. Kazu normally thought the dripper was too much trouble.

She silently proceeded to grind the beans. There was no conversation. Revealing himself to be far from outgoing, the man just scratched his head, seemingly unable to strike up any kind of exchange. Soon, the aroma of coffee began to fill the air.

‘Sorry for the wait.’

Kazu placed the lightly steaming coffee in front of the man.

He remained still, just staring at the cup in silence. Kazu began cleaning the apparatus in front of her deftly.

The only sound in the room was the woman in the dress turning the pages of her novel. After a while, the man reached his hand out for the cup. If he had been a coffee-loving customer, at that point he would have inhaled the aroma deeply, but without altering his dull expression, he sipped the coffee with a clumsy slurp. But then…

‘This coffee,’ he moaned quietly. Its sourness seemed to have surprised him. His expression transformed as furrowed lines formed in the centre of his forehead.

The coffee was a variety called mocha, which has a unique blend of pleasant aroma and acid-sour taste. Nagare was obsessed with this taste, and the cafe only served varieties of mocha. However, for people who normally don’t drink coffee, like this man, the strong distinctive flavour of coffee brewed from only mocha or Kilimanjaro beans is often bewildering.

The names of coffee beans mostly derive from where they are grown. In the case of mocha, the beans are grown in Yemen and Ethiopia and named after Yemen’s port city of Mocha, where they were traditionally shipped from. Kilimanjaro beans are grown in Tanzania. Nagare enjoyed using beans grown in Ethiopia, and there were certain people who loved their strong acid-sour taste.

‘It is mocha Harrar. It was Kinuyo sensei’s favourite.’

Upon hearing this suddenly from Kazu, the man gave an involuntary start and looked at her with open hostility.

Of course it wasn’t the name of the coffee that had surprised him; it was the waitress, who he had never met before, mentioning Kinuyo’s name even though he hadn’t even told her his.

His name was Yukio Mita, the aspiring potter, Kinuyo’s son, and Kyoko’s younger brother. Although Kinuyo had been a long-time regular, Yukio had never visited the cafe before. Kyoko, who lived a relatively close fifteen-minute drive away, had started frequenting the cafe after coming to buy coffee when Kinuyo was hospitalized. Yukio eyed Kazu with suspicion, but Kazu was not taken aback in the slightest. That she had been waiting for him was unspoken but made obvious by her silent smile.

‘When…’ began Yukio, scratching his head, ‘did you know I was her son?’ He hadn’t purposely set out to conceal his identity, but it seemed to bother him.

Kazu went on cleaning the coffee mill.

‘I could just tell. You have a similar face,’ she explained.

Not sure how to react to that, Yukio touched his face with his hand. It didn’t seem to be something he had been told before, and he looked unconvinced.

‘It might be a coincidence, but I saw Kyoko today, and our conversation turned to you. So, it was partly intuition, but I thought it might be you…’

Upon hearing Kazu’s explanation, Yukio replied, ‘Oh, I see…’ For a moment, he averted his eyes.

‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Yukio Mita.’ He introduced himself with a nod.

Kazu returned a soft nod of her own. ‘Kazu Tokita. Pleased to meet you,’ she replied.

‘Mum mentioned you in letters. And she wrote about this cafe’s rumour as well…’ Yukio muttered on hearing Kazu’s name. He glanced over at the woman in the dress.

He cleared his throat and stood up from the counter.

‘I would like to return to the past, please. I want to go back to when my mother was still alive,’ he declared with a slight nod.

As a child, Yukio was a serious type who would always persevere with a single task. If he was told to do a job, he would never give up, even when left unsupervised. While on cleaning duties at elementary school, for example, he would carry on with his assigned task even if everyone else was just messing around.

He had a warm personality and treated everyone kindly. Because he associated with the quiet kids in his class all through elementary school, junior high and high school, he never stood out as a student. As a child, he was like dull wallpaper.

Dull Yukio had his epiphany in high school while on a field trip to Kyoto. His assignment was to experience Kyoto’s traditional crafts. He had chosen pottery out of pottery, hand fans, seals or bamboo work. Even though it was his first time turning a wheel, the piece of pottery that he created was shaped far better than those of the other students. The pottery teacher told him, ‘I’ve never seen a piece of pottery turned so beautifully by kids in this class. You’ve got talent!’ These were the first words of praise that Yukio had ever received.

The field trip left him with a vague yearning to be a potter, though he had no idea how to go about becoming one.

This aspiration persisted, even long after returning from the field trip.

Then one day, while watching TV, he saw a studio potter by the name of Yamagishi Katsura. ‘I’ve been making pottery for forty years now, and I am finally satisfied with what I am making,’ the potter said. Looking at the pieces that were shown, Yukio was profoundly moved. It wasn’t that he was dissatisfied with his ordinary life, it was just that from somewhere in his heart he heard, I want to find work that is worth spending a lifetime on. Yamagishi Katsura was someone Yukio could admire and aspire to become.

There were two different paths he could choose to become a studio potter: one was training at a fine arts university or ceramic arts school, the other was becoming an apprentice at a potter’s studio.

Rather than going to a ceramic arts school, Yukio decided to become an apprentice under Yamagishi Katsura. Yukio had liked what Katsura had said on TV. ‘To become top class, you must be in touch with top class.’ However, when he spoke to his father Seiichi about wanting to be a studio potter, he was told, ‘Of the thousands or tens of thousands of people with such an aspiration, only a handful of talented individuals truly put food on the table as a potter, and I don’t see that talent in you.’ Despite his father’s opposition, Yukio didn’t give up. He was acutely aware, though, that if he went to university or a ceramic arts school, his parents would have to pay for his tuition.

He didn’t want his selfish pursuits to be a burden to his parents, so he decided to train to be a potter while living and working at a studio. Seiichi was against the idea, but in the end, it was Kinuyo who persuaded him, and immediately after graduating from high school, Yukio moved to Kyoto. The studio he chose was, of course, Katsura’s.