Mina’s Matchbox, a novel by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Synder

Mina’s Matchbox (is) surreal, beautiful, gorgeous, delicate, elegant, thought-provoking…and still on my mind after reading the book. Funmi Tofowomo, Editor, Cafeafricana.com

From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, a hypnotic, introspective novel about an affluent Japanese family navigating buried secrets, and their young house guest who uncovers them.

“A story of first enchantments and last gasps…Effervescent.” —New York Times Book Review

“Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay with her aunt’s family. Tomoko’s aunt is an enigma and an outlier in her working-class family, and her magnificent home—and handsome foreign husband, the president of a soft drink company—are symbols of that status. The seventeen rooms are filled with German-made furnishings; there are sprawling gardens and even an old zoo where the family’s pygmy hippopotamus resides. The family is just as beguiling as their mansion—Tomoko’s dignified and devoted aunt, her German great-aunt, and her dashing, charming uncle, who confidently sits as the family’s patriarch. At the center of the family is Tomoko’s cousin Mina, a precocious, asthmatic girl of thirteen who draws Tomoko into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

In this elegant jewel box of a book, Yoko Ogawa invites us to witness a powerful and formative interlude in Tomoko’s life. Behind the family’s sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her great-aunt’s experience of the Second World War, her aunt’s misery. Rich with the magic and mystery of youthful experience, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time—and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Praise for Mina’s Matchbox:Yoko Ogawa

‘I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.’ RUTH OZEKI, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

‘Dreamy and whimsical, Mina’s Matchbox traffics in the themes at which Ogawa always excels: memory, identity, and nostalgia’ Esquire, Best Books of the Summer

‘A conspicuously gifted writer. . . To read Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state. . . She possesses an effortless, glassy, eerie brilliance’ Guardian

‘Evokes the secret crushes and crushing secrets of girlhood with charm and elegance’ People

‘Immersive and poignant. . . filled with wonder’ Bookpage

Reader Reviews

‘I was totally swept away by it.’

‘It’s a beautiful coming of age story. I’d recommend it to any lovers of translated fiction!’

‘Uplifting. And Pochiko, the pygmy hippo? A wonder.’

‘A beautiful coming of age story’On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars.

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life.

The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle’s magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Praise for Mina’s Matchbox

‘I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.’ RUTH OZEKI, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

‘Dreamy and whimsical, Mina’s Matchbox traffics in the themes at which Ogawa always excels: memory, identity, and nostalgia’ Esquire, Best Books of the Summer

‘A conspicuously gifted writer. . . To read Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state. . . She possesses an effortless, glassy, eerie brilliance’ Guardian

‘Evokes the secret crushes and crushing secrets of girlhood with charm and elegance’ People

‘Immersive and poignant. . . filled with wonder’ Bookpage

Reader Reviews

‘I was totally swept away by it.’

‘It’s a beautiful coming of age story. I’d recommend it to any lovers of translated fiction!’

‘Uplifting. And Pochiko, the pygmy hippo? A wonder.’

‘A beautiful coming of age story’

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for Mina’s Matchbox

A Most Anticipated Book of the Summer from People, The Atlantic, TIME, Boston Globe, Bustle,and Publishers Weekly

A Best Book of August from the Christian Science Monitor

A Best New Book of the Week from Parade

“A story of first enchantments and last gasps…Effervescent…’We look at the world once, in childhood,’ Louise Glück wrote in her 1996 poem ‘Nostos.’ ‘The rest is memory.’ Ogawa captures the enduring spark of that imprinting and its oracular glow. We revisit those moments when the match was first struck, when the future still felt like ours to ignite.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Ogawa evokes the secret crushes and crushing secrets of girlhood with charm and elegance.”
—People

“A bittersweet coming-of-age tale…Dreamy and whimsical, Mina’s Matchbox traffics in the themes at which Ogawa always excels: memory, identity, and nostalgia.”
—Esquire

“A magnificent translation…A lovely epistolary epilogue allows readers to close the book contented that Mina’s Matchbox is almost a fairy tale. Its moral? Childish curiosity is as fleeting as the flame of a beautifully struck match—capture it before it’s gone and you can kindle a lifetime love of learning.”
—Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“One of the literary events of the year.”
—Parade

“The reader is immersed in [Tomoko’s] ardent love for her fragile cousin, and comes to appreciate how history seeps into every life, even the most sheltered ones.”
—The Atlantic

“A transfixing coming of age tale.”
—TIME

“Capturing a Japanese girl’s adolescence in the early 1970s, this hypnotic book shimmers with eccentric enigmas.”
—Boston Globe

“Gemlike…Ogawa’s storytelling is radiant.”
—Christian Science Monitor

“Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina’s Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.”
—Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness

“Hypnotic, introspective.”
—Daily Kos

“It’s the kind of transformative trip that makes for a powerful read at any time of year, but feels especially appropriate when you’re craving a (literary) summer sojourn.”
—Bustle

“An incredible novel that affirms Ogawa’s position as the great writer of fantastical literature today…Brighter in tone and detail…but somehow the tension and terror of living is always at the periphery. Ogawa has produced a world near and tender, but tough and bittersweet, like recognizing a lost loved one in the story told by someone new.”
—The Millions

“I just loved it. It’s an absolute delight of a book…A jewel-box of a novel. It’s wonderful.”
—Suzanna Hermans of Oblong Books on WAMC

“A delicate domestic novel…A quiet novel to savor!”
—Historical Novel Society

“Powerful in its nuanced details, Mina’s Matchbox is an immersive and poignant coming-of-age story…Curious and filled with wonder…Ogawa’s masterful descriptions, too, add depth and suggest simmering secrets that wait to boil over…An elegant and stirring work that captures the dreams of youth, and the lingering sweetness that can remain even after those dreams have faded.”
—Bookpage, starred review

“Focusing on characters of an age when the world seems full of wonder and possibility, this engaging bildungsroman explores the friendship and mutual curiosity between two extraordinary young people… Facing complicated themes with deceptively simple language, she pulls off a neat trick here, painting everything in miniature and often in hindsight without losing the immediacy of Tomoko’s experiences. A charming yet guileless exploration of childhood’s ephemeral pleasures and reflexive poignancy.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“Captivating…Ogawa pulls off the rare feat of making childhood memories both credible and provocative. Readers will be hypnotized.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In language as clean and delicate as a whisper, the cousins’ year of shared adventures frays as tragedies chip away at the public façade of the family’s private realities…Ogawa writes with exquisite artistry about the complications of a close-knit household whose members are quietly protective of its wounding secrets, as seen through the eyes of a young girl; the novel is beautifully translated by Snyder.”
—Library Journal, starred review

“[12-year-old] Tomoko proves to be a prodigiously astute observer, discovering truths behind closed doors…Remarkable is the timing of Snyder’s impressively seamless translation. Ogawa already brilliantly, deftly broadens her not-quite-quotidian family saga with pivotal world events.”
—Booklist, starred review

About the Author

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 Memory Police, The Diving Pool, a collection of three novellas; The Housekeeper and the Professor; Hotel Iris; and Revenge. She lives in Ashiya, Japan.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2024/09/01/books/minas-matchbox-yoko-ogawa/