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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Where is Fumiko when she calls Kurata while he is in the café?

2. What object does Yukio give to his mother when he visits the past?

3. When the narrator says that Yukio "felt like he had fallen into a deep crevasse," which is the best definition of "crevasse" (66)?

4. What happens immediately after Yukio leaves the café to make a phone call?

5. Which term accurately expresses how the narrator characterizes Kurata in the exposition explaining Katsuki's work life?

Short Essay Questions

1. When Kimiko enters the café, whom does Kiyoshi pretend to be, and why?

2. What is so tricky about Kurata's time-travel plans, and how has he tried to plan ahead to overcome this difficulty?

3. How does Yaeko Hirai's story inspire Kiyoshi to make a change in the way he has been living his life?

4. Why does Kimiko have such a strong emotional reaction to the gift from Kiyoshi?

5. Why does Kiyoshi feel partially responsible for his wife's death?

6. What larger point about life is the narrator of "Husband and Wife" making in the story's introductory comments about winter and spring?

7. What comparison does Yukio make between his own situation and that of a character in Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird?

8. After Asami suffered a miscarriage, what advice did Kurata give her?

9. What is Kurata wearing in the story's opening, and why does it make him seem out of place?

10. What role did Kinuyo play in Kazu's recovery from her mother's death?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Now that you are aware of how difficult it is to translate Japanese literature into English, consider which specific passages of Tales from the Café might have proven especially difficult for Trousselot to translate. For instance, when Kyoko is introduced on page 7, Trousselot writes, "Obviously caring little for formalities with strangers, she spoke to Gohtaro casually, as if he was a familiar face." Do you imagine that this sentence was necessary in the original, Japanese, text? How did Kawaguchi probably indicate this aspect of Kyoko's character? Even with this explicit explanation, does the English text really convey the impact that Kyoko's unexpected and unconventional language probably conveyed in the original? Also, consider the many subtle, elliptical conversations between Nagare and Kazu: what might be missing from the English translation that the original Japanese could easily convey? Write an essay that considers these and other aspects of translation in Tales from the Café. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text, and be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

By the end of Tales from the Café, how has Kazu changed? What details and language early in the story establish that Kazu is trapped in the past? How does Kawaguchi use exposition and narrative action to explain her situation and begin to resolve it over the course of the four stories in the collection? How do other characters contribute to the change Kazu undergoes? What details and language at the end of the story demonstrate that Kazu has finally begun to heal from her grief? Write an essay that traces the development of Kazu's story and analyzes how she changes over the course of this collection. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout the text, and be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

Read Fritz Leiber's short story "Try and Change the Past" (available online). Consider the messages it sends about the relationship between past and present. How are these messages similar to and different from those in Tales from the Café? How are the "rules" of time travel constituted in each narrative? What motivates people to travel to the past? How do their travels impact their present reality, if at all? Write an essay comparing and contrasting messages about the relationship of past and present in Leiber's story and Kawaguchi's story collection. Support your assertions with evidence drawn from throughout both texts, and be sure to cite any quoted evidence in MLA format.

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