Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder

As Tomoko reflects on her life from middle-age, one year stands out in shining glory, a year she thoroughly loved, despite the reasons for its beginning and tragedy at the end: the year she was twelve, in 1972. Her father dies and her mother looks to go back to school, so it’s decided Tomoko will spend the year in Ashiya, with her aunt and uncle. Her aunt had married a half-German man of considerable means, and Tomoko anticipates an enchanting year in Ashiya. And so it is, in hand with her cousin Mina, a girl a year younger, a capable and clever storyteller, a collector of matchboxes, and something of a fairy princess to Tomoko.

Mina’s Matchbox is simple: Tomoko lives with her aunt and uncle, her cousin Mina, the gardener Kobayashi-san, the housekeeper Yoneda-san, her uncle’s German mother, and a pygmy hippopotamus, Pochiko. Her uncle is the director of the beverage company Fressy, which makes a radium-infused pop. But the genius is in how Ogawa frames the story, a charming, detailed, memory. Tomoko observes the family and all their actions, longing to be helpful and purely part of the family, which becomes over the year. She becomes inseparable from Mina, the girls becoming fast friends and confidants. Their focus shifts over the year, from obsessively watching the Japanese men’s volleyball team as part of the Olympics, to space and meteor showers, to the joy of a proper German Christmas in the Ashiya home. Each episode is recounted with love and generosity to her girlhood self. Ogawa tells a story of that tender, vulnerable time in a girl’s life where she hits puberty with great care.

This is also a critical look at a lifestyle and a family on decline: despite the happiness of Tomoko and Mina’s days, there are other concerns: Mina’s severe asthma, the seeming depression of her aunt, and Grandmother Rosa’s grief from WWII. Her uncle disappears for days, routinely, and the house is changed. These pressures sit just outside of their sphere of notice, until their darkness becomes too heavy, and Tomoko decides to take at least some matters into her own hands.

A thoroughly magical read.

Ogawa is a writer with an incredibly wide range of stories and genres, and here, ably translated by Snyder, tells a stunning story of a girl coming of age, a year frozen in time, and the challenges of growing up. This is a study in class from an adolescent girl, and a thoroughly magical read. Tomoko has a sweet, naïve, curious voice, and her wonder at the riches and oddities of the life of her extended family. I was spellbound reading this novel, and I enjoyed it fully. It’s very different from The Memory Police, but equally as well-crafted.

Yoko Ogawa has won every major Japanese literary award. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Her works include The Diving Pool, a collection of three novellas; The Housekeeper and the Professor; Hotel Iris; and Revenge. She lives in Hyogo.

Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (August 13, 2024)
Hardcover 9″ x 6″ | 288 pages
ISBN: 9780771019890

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.