Review of Mina’s Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa

*Mina’s Matchbox* by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (2024). Published by Pantheon.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

I’ve always and forever been a library girl from the bottom of my heart. When I was a child my mother would always take us to the library and I’d pick out a ridiculous amount of books, and I’ve continued that tradition when I moved home from New York City, after college, in order to keep picking my brain for new stories out there in the world.

Although I’ve reviewed more American books and movies, simply because it is often more accessible for me to get these kinds of content as someone living in the United States, I often say the core of my blog reviews are my content on Asian literature and film. I think there are understandable holes in how we cover Asian literature/content on the Internet, and as someone who worked in a space where I was punished for doing so, I want this site to be somewhere I can help fill that hole a little bit.

I’ve been so proud of my little library because they’ve been diversifying a lot lately. I can find all of the most hip books in translation, which is wild to say because even though we’re a major metro area, in the past it was harder to find authors from Korea, Africa, or Latin America. Now I go to the new fiction section and find all the authors I’ve been meaning to read.

Like on this particular day, I was wandering in there and found a copy of Mina’s Matchbox nestled among all of the other popular reads for that week. I remembered Ogawa’s name from The Memory Police, so I picked the book up immediately without even reading the synopsis. I devoured this novel over the course of two days, which is a pretty solid pace for me and shows how invested I was in it.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much, as I know introductions can get quite lengthy.

When Tomoko leaves behind her family to visit rich relatives, she bonds with her passionate cousin Mina.

This novel takes place throughout the course of a brief amount of time in the narrator’s, Tomoko’s, life. In the 1972, during the spring, she leaves Tokyo and her mother behind to visit her family in Ashiya, which is off the coast of Japan. Tomoko is 12 at the time, and her family living there consists of her aunt, her uncle (who is a foreigner), a German grandmother, and Mina, her 13-year-old cousin she really gets to know in this novel.

They live in this massive estate full of old German furniture, and there’s even a zoo where their aging hippopotamus, who is Mina’s beloved friend and companion, as well as the uncle’s beloved pet, lives and thrives. There’s a lot to learn about the family Tomoko observes throughout the course of the novel, but the highlight is specifically Tomoko’s relationship with Mina.

Mina has asthma and isn’t in the best health, but there is no tragedy involving her in this book. Tomoko and Mina don’t really know each other at the beginning of the novel, but throughout their time together, they grow extremely close, swapping stories, practicing volleyball, and going to school.

Tomoko’s time there is finite, so even as they navigate crushes and collecting matchboxes, there’s a sense that everything will come to an end. There’s a whimsical tone throughout the writing as well, which makes it even more nostalgic to read and feels like an intimate diary entry that we just stumbled upon.

However, it is important to note that the seams of the family are coming apart, and that bleeds through even to the children throughout the course of the novel. It’s not all fun and games in the estate, especially when things are falling apart.

A bizarre and unexpected moment in this book though is when Tomoko is educated by the German grandmother’s background. It is a complete and utter shock is this moment when the grandmother reveals that she is Jewish and left behind Germany after World War II, which then includes some commentary about Israel.

It’s just a wild moment because there isn’t much leading up to this moment, then it becomes a little bit of a lecture on Zionism because the precursor for the conversation is the attack against the Israeli team at the Olympics in 1972.

We are seeing this through the perspective of a child who knows nothing else but the grandmother’s thoughts, so I can see how some readers might be taken aback by the stances promoted in the narrative through that sense.

I personally did not see it as a defense, but instead a reflection of the character and her lived experiences. I don’t have to agree with it in some ways, but it exists and would be a denial of her lived experience (albeit fictional). However, I do also think that the Israel discussion might trigger some sensitive feelings among readers, so if that’s something that might cause you to feel anger, I suggest avoiding this book.

It made some sense to mention what happened in Munich because of the characters’ obsession with volleyball and the Japanese team during that Olympics, but it became a bit of a learning moment that might find some readers cringing because they don’t agree with it. It’s a sensitive time to publish this, that’s for sure.

Overall Thoughts

Honestly, I can see how some might dislike this novel. It meanders through a certain point in time and really embodies the concept of a snapshot of that period in Tomoko’s life. Even as she exits it, she can never return to the time where she was best friends with Mina and watching over their pet hippo together.

I really liked the novel though despite these drawbacks. The writing itself is really good, and I felt absorbed into the world in which these characters were living inside of. We really get a sense of the places and spaces depicted in the book through the descriptions.

It’s not my favorite novel, but I enjoyed the experience of reading this book quite a bit throughout. I was rooting for these little girls to thrive and survive, even if it means they go off and live their own lives in the end.

I say go pick it up from your local indie bookstore or library if you’re interested! It might be worth giving a shot at least once.

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