When I think back to my time in Ashiya, the day Mina showed me her boxes of matchboxes stands out as the day she really took me into her confidence. Of course, we’d been on good terms before then, but the boxes of boxes opened the final door to our friendship. I was the only one among her friends or family who knew her secret. In that enormous house in Ashiya, she and I were the only ones who knew what was hidden away in those little boxes.
A beautiful coming of age story — set in 1972 suburban Japan — Mina’s Matchbox follows two cousins as they bond over first loves, literature, and a pygmy hippopotamus named Pochiko. Translated from the Japanese original, there’s a slightly stiff formality to the writing, but author Yōko Ogawa paints a vivid picture of the time and place, and by the novel’s end, I felt totally immersed and emotionally invested. Ogawa captures something true and universal about this transitional time of life and I believed everything she writes about the long-term effects of childhood experiences, family ties, and being disappointed by the ones we most admire. I loved this, rounding up to five stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
Whenever I return there in my memory, their voices are as lively as ever, their smiling faces full of warmth. Grandmother Rosa, seated before the makeup mirror she brought from Germany as part of her trousseau, carefully rubbing her face with beauty cream. My aunt in the smoking room, tirelessly hunting for typographical errors. My uncle, impeccably dressed, even at home, endlessly tossing off his quips and jokes. The staff, Yoneda-san and Kobayashi-san, working hard in their respective domains; the family pet, Pochiko, relaxing in the garden. And my cousin Mina reading a book. We always knew when she was about from the rustling of the box of matches she kept in her pocket. The matchboxes were her precious possessions, her talismans.
Looking back thirty years later, Tomoko remembers fondly the year that she spent living with her maternal aunt’s family (as Tomoko’s widowed mother upgraded her own education in Tokyo). Tomoko remembers her initial surprise at just how large and luxurious their family home was, how handsome and charming her uncle, and how frail and beautiful her cousin, Mina: one year younger but years ahead in knowledge and sophistication. Mina’s paternal grandmother had been born in Germany, and it added a fascinating dimension to have this ageing and elegant character — still somewhat struggling to speak and read Japanese after forty years in the country — who completely accepted (the technically unrelated Tomoko) into her heart, and whose closest friend is the family housekeeper, Yoneda-san (the pair harmonise beautifully when singing duets in both German and Japanese). It was also interesting to watch the girls excitedly follow the Japanese national men’s volleyball team as they prepared for the Munich Olympics — with the German grandmother happily cheering on both the Japanese and German teams — and then seeing the Black September terrorist attack play out (and learn that, having moved to Japan in the 1930s, the grandmother was the only member of her family to survive WWII). Also interesting: the hippopotamus was the only surviving animal from a zoo that Mina’s grandfather had opened on their property (the zoo becoming another victim of WWII), and everything about the pre- and post-war experience of this German-Japanese family was intriguing to me. All of this, and more, is just what’s going on in the background as Tomoko and Mina undergo an intense year of friendship: sharing new experiences, sharing secrets, and Tomoko eventually learning that a big house doesn’t guarantee a happy home.
With the passage of time, even as the distance has increased, the memories of the days I spent with Mina in Ashiya have grown more vivid and dense, have taken root deep in my heart. You might even say they’ve become the very foundation of my memory. The matchboxes from Mina, my card from the Ashiya Public Library, the family photo taken in the garden — they’re always with me. On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars. I remember that Sunday adventure, when I went alone to the Fressy factory, received a matchbox from a batlike man, and found the Ezaka Royal Mansion. And when I recall those things, I feel somehow that the past is still alive, still watching over me.
The strongest point that Ogawa makes is how impressionable we are at that transitional time into the teenage years, and the experiences and influences we have during that period can build the foundations of who we eventually become. Looking back thirty years later, Tomoko shows where these seeds were planted in her own life, and I thought the whole was pulled off with a deft and subtle touch. Loved it; I will need to get to The Memory Police.
