Book Review: Days at the Torunka Café by Satoshi Yagisawa

NAME – Days at The Torunka Café

AUTHOR- Satoshi Yagisawa

PAGES- 220 pages

GENRE- Contemporary fiction

I recently finished this book, Days at the Torunka cafe by Satoshi Yagisawa. It's an international bestseller, so people have loved this book. It is quite popular on BookTok nowadays.

Let's start with this- I am not a big fan of this book. I liked it, but I won't come back and re-read it.

I usually consume fast-paced books, action-based stories, thrillers, mysteries and fantasies that sweep me to a different make-believe world. Days at Torunka Café is the opposite of that. It reads like a collection of short stories about the ordinary lives of ordinary people. I don't dislike it. It’s just that I am not a fan of these kinds of books.

Despite my fixed preferences, I try to read other genres to get a wider perspective of life in general. This is one of my ways to expand my horizon and stay in touch with reality. And that’s why I picked this one up. The stories unfold in a small coffee shop tucked away at the end of a narrow alley in Tokyo.

If I indulge a little more, there are three short stories, each roughly 60-80 pages.

A young woman who leaves behind a napkin folded into the shape of a ballerina.

A man in his fifties – divorced, unemployed and slipping into alcoholism, reaching out for the comforts of his past.

The last story is about the café owner’s daughter learning to cope with her sister's loss and her own adolescence.

If you have explored Japanese author/stories before, you will know how meticulous they are about details and their calm devotion to craft. That passion reflects in the coffee that their customers claim to have remained the same - a delicious, rich, and aromatic blend, through time. The stories unfold with each coffee order, both literally and figuratively. And in the beginning, they might appear quite ordinary, but they slowly reveal the complex emotions of human beings. It aims to be subtle and soulful. The endings to some of the stories might not be what you expect, and people who are carrying some heaviness in their hearts might find comfort in them. To them, they will be like a warm cup of something familiar that will ask you to encounter your feelings and sit with them for a while.

The storytelling is steady and not at all dramatic. The characters talk, pour their hearts out, and other listens. These are simple conversations that move at a steady pace, no filler involved. At the end of it all, they come to an understanding with their past/ inner turmoil, and they move forward with a smile. These are supposed to be cosy and yet at the end of it, I felt like a cynic, for not being satisfied with how simply things got resolved. I thought that the stronger emotions, such as anger, hatred, and jealousy, were avoided. I felt like these stories were like a summary of an event where the negative parts were glossed over, and things turned out okay in the end. The conversations were too polite and charming in my opinion, just to fit into a certain mould.

Days at Torunka Café is only 220 pages long - a quiet, easy read that might not stir you, but will definitely calm you.

Enjoy.