Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa

 

Paperback version

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 grandmother, 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, which she looks back on briefly from adulthood at the novel’s end. Behind the family’s sophistication are complications that Tomoko struggles to understand—her uncle’s mysterious absences, her German grandmother’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.

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Mina's Matchbox

Author : Yoko Ogawa

First Published in Japanese : 2006

First Published in English : 2014

Original Language : English

Pages :  280

Genre : Literary Fiction, Coming of Age

After finishing this book, I really wish I had a friend to brainstorm or exchange opinions with about it. I even wanted to enroll in a Literature major just because I was so fascinated by this book. Not because it is perfect, but because there are so many things to talk about—mostly why the author did this and that.

To be fair, I would like to put a disclaimer that I found one part of the book quite uncomfortable. There is a chapter (or two chapters) about the Munich tragedy during the 1972 Olympics, where Israeli athletes were held hostage by Palestinians, and the author seems to frame it as a one-sided story. I understand the purpose of the scene as part of the background that builds emotional depth, but honestly, it doesn't feel like a neutral point of view, even if it is told through the perspective of a twelve-year-old girl.

So, this is a story about an eleven-year-old girl named Mina, who lives in a luxurious home with an almost perfect family, as seen through the lens of her working-class cousin, Tomoko.

In the spring of 1972, Tomoko leaves her hometown of Okayama and travels to Ashiya, a city where the beach meets the mountains, near Osaka and Kobe. She will stay with her aunt's family while her mother goes to Tokyo to enroll in a seamstress course.

Ever since Tomoko was a child, she had known that her aunt, who married a German expatriate, lived in a wealthy family. The baby stroller they sent when Tomoko was a baby was the most valuable item in her family's home.

When her handsome, tall, and warm uncle picks Tomoko up at Shin-Osaka Station and drives his precious Mercedes-Benz, it becomes Tomoko's strongest first memory before she even enters the house in Ashiya.

The house, built on the hillside where Mount Rokko can be casually seen from the balcony, is surrounded by a huge garden that, funnily enough, once operated as a zoo. There is also a pond where a thirty-five-year-old pygmy hippo named Pochiko soaks in the water.

Living in that house are her slim and reserved aunt; an eleven-year-old girl who looks like a second grader, Mina; a German grandmother who speaks hesitant Japanese, Grandmother Rosa; the head housekeeper and Grandmother Rosa's best friend, Yoneda-san; and, of course, the handsome uncle, who is also the president of a soft drink company. There is also Kobayashi-san, the gardener who takes care of Pochiko, although he lives near the house.

Mina is a sickly child who inherited asthma, which is sometimes triggered during the colder seasons. Since she suffers from severe motion sickness, she rides Pochiko to and from school every day. A fifteen-minute ride on a pygmy hippo, guided by Kobayashi-san, is quite a sight on the streets of Ashiya.

However, Mina is a brilliant girl. She loves reading, and books are scattered throughout every corner of the house, alongside precious works of art. She is also remarkably cheerful despite her physical condition. One thing is certain: no one in this world could light a match as strikingly beautifully as Mina.

Tomoko is warmly welcomed and accepted into the house. Everyone treats her like a permanent member of the family. Even during dinners specially prepared by a five-star hotel, Tomoko has her own nameplate at the dining table.

Yet eventually, Tomoko begins to notice the oddities within the household. Her aunt, who has her own room for drinking and smoking, often retreats there to read. She is always quiet in that room—perhaps even quieter, as if she is trying to make herself unnoticed.

Then there is Yoneda-san, the strong woman who manages almost everything in the house. Nothing in the household seems to operate without her permission. Her devotion is remarkable, yet she never takes a single day off. Where is her family? Yoneda-san seems as though she has belonged to that house from the very beginning.

And of course, there is the uncle's absence. It is hard not to notice it. When Mina has an asthma attack for the first time since Tomoko's arrival, her uncle does not even come home. For the first time, Tomoko cries that night, overwhelmed with sorrow as she realizes how much she misses her own mother.

Also, there is Ryuichi, Mina's older brother, who attends college in Switzerland and comes home during the summer break. Ryuichi always sends letters to every member of the family except his father. When Ryuichi comes home, Tomoko notices that the relationship between her cousin and his father is, as expected, cold.

Then there is Pochiko. A thirty-five-year-old pygmy hippopotamus living quietly in the garden, treated as naturally as any other member of the household. No one ever questions why a hippopotamus belongs there. I mean, what kind of family—even an incredibly wealthy one—keeps a hippopotamus as a pet and rides it to school? Looking back, I think Pochiko is the first sign that this house quietly embraces oddities without ever feeling the need to explain them.

And at last, Mina and her love for matchboxes. She keeps an entire box full of matchboxes under her bed. It is, of course, odd, yet somehow understandable. Whenever she receives a new matchbox with a special illustration on its cover, she creates a background story for the picture. The matchbox collection is her biggest secret, shared only with Tomoko. 

What matters most in this book is not the premise or an extravagant plot. I love how the author pays enormous attention to details and events without offering much explanation as to why they matter. Take Tomoko's sorrow on the night Mina is hospitalized, for example. The reader understands, without being explicitly told, how lonely and emotionally cold that family can sometimes be. No matter how close they are or how much they talk to one another in the house, you cannot ignore the fact that the father is absent during one of the hardest moments in his beloved daughter's life.

Not limited to the internal events, the author also uses external events as anchors to build emotions and convey hidden messages beneath the characters' stories. These include the aforementioned Munich tragedy, the death of the beloved author Yasunari Kawabata, the meteor shower, and the day Yoneda-san wins the grand prize tickets to Hokkaido (which combines both an external and an internal event), among many others. Both the external and internal events are threaded together delicately through seemingly mundane moments (with no major plot twists or dramatic conflicts), yet they carry so many emotional hints beneath the surface.

The final memory, in which Mina is hospitalized and Tomoko decides to search for the Young Man from Wednesday (the man who supplies matchboxes to Mina), feels exactly like something a twelve-year-old girl would do. Funnily enough, I think it is the only truly impulsive act in the entire novel, which also makes it surprisingly impactful and deeply satisfying from the reader's perspective.

Of course, that doesn't mean this novel is beyond criticism for me. It is difficult to comprehend how everyone in this novel is so restrained—restrained in their actions, in expressing uncomfortable emotions, and in speaking or asking questions when they matter most. Mina and Tomoko are both very young girls, yet they keep their curiosity and negative emotions trapped inside. I don't know why. Maybe it is because the story is told through Tomoko's memories, so we cannot fully explore Mina's feelings. Or maybe it was common in Japan at that time for children to be reserved from such a young age.

Yet, Mina's love for matchboxes is brilliantly portrayed by Yoko Ogawa. A girl who rarely leaves the house except to go to school collects matchboxes with rare illustrations. The matchboxes are not only her biggest secret, but also a manifestation of her inner world, expressed through beautiful stories that only an intelligent and imaginative girl could write. I even wonder whether the author herself was more like Mina in her younger years.

Well, I'll end my little tale-telling here because this review is already far too long. It is absolutely a highly recommended read, especially for readers who are emotionally observant. It is a novel for those who read every word not simply for its beautiful prose, but to piece together the emotional clues the author quietly leaves behind. Honestly, it has been a long time since I read a novel that left me this baffled and made me wonder whether I had missed something hidden between its pages.

To sum up, the story may end on the last page, but the questions begin there.