Order of Toshikazu Kawaguchi Books

Toshikazu Kawaguchi is a Japanese author, playwright, and director. He is the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and its sequels, including Tales from the Café, Before Your Memory Fades, Before We Say Goodbye, Before We Forget Kindness, and Before I Knew I Loved You. His fiction combines time‑bending premises with quiet, character‑driven storytelling about love, loss, and second chances. Born in Osaka in 1971, he now heads Kawaguchi Productions.

Toshikazu Kawaguchi made his debut as a novelist in 2015 with Before the Coffee Gets Cold. Below is a list of Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s books in order of when they were originally released:

Publication Order of Before the Coffee Gets Cold Books

If You Like Toshikazu Kawaguchi Books, You’ll Love…

• Fredrik Backman
• Matt Haig
• Kate Atkinson

Toshikazu Kawaguchi Synopses: In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, a small café tucked down a back alley in Tokyo has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than a century. Local legend says the café offers something unusual alongside its drinks: the chance to travel back in time. The experience comes with strict rules, and the most important is simple. The trip lasts only as long as the coffee stays warm.

Over one summer, four visitors arrive hoping to make use of the café’s peculiar offer. Each has a reason for wanting to revisit a moment that still weighs on them. One hopes to confront the man who left her. Another wants to receive a letter from her husband, whose memory has been taken by Alzheimer’s. A third longs to see her sister one last time. The fourth wishes to meet the daughter she never had the chance to know. Their journeys are shaped by the limits of the café’s magic and by the emotions they carry with them.

In Tales from the Café, a small Tokyo coffee shop tucked down a back alley has been serving carefully brewed cups for more than a century. Local legend says the café offers something unusual alongside its drinks: the chance to travel back in time. The experience comes with strict rules, and the most important is that the journey lasts only as long as the coffee stays warm.

This companion novel follows four patrons who arrive with familiar hopes and new regrets, each seeking a moment from the past that still shapes their present. As they revisit time with family, friends, and lovers, they must confront what they left behind and decide what they need in order to move forward.

Wistful, gentle, and quietly inventive, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s novel once again invites readers to consider what they would do if they were given the chance to return to a single moment in time.

In Before We Say Goodbye, Café Donna Donna sits on the hillside of Mount Hakodate, known for its sweeping views of the port below. Like the small Tokyo café Funiculi Funicula, it offers something far more unusual than its scenery or its carefully brewed coffee. Customers who follow a strict set of rules can travel back in time, returning to a single moment that still weighs on them.

This novel introduces four new visitors, each hoping to use the café’s time‑traveling offer to revisit someone they have lost or a moment they cannot let go. A young woman resents her deceased parents for leaving her alone. A comedian aches for the partner with whom he once shared dreams. A younger sister is consumed by grief she cannot move past. And a young man realizes too late that he loved his childhood friend. Their journeys unfold alongside familiar faces from Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s earlier novels, all connected by the quiet magic of the café and the longing that brings people through its doors.