Mina's Matchbox: A Novel
“Mina’s Matchbox is not only a compelling tale, but it is also beautifully written and constructed. The prose is clear, graceful, and engaging.”
In Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, all is not as it first seems in the eyes of the 12-year-old narrator Tomoko. In 1972 Tomoko is sent by her widowed mother to live with her wealthy aunt and family in Ashiya so that her mother can attend school to secure a more stable and lucrative job.
Tomoko is dazzled by her charming uncle who meets her at the train station, his sleek Mercedes-Benz, and the magnificent 17-room house. She says, “I will never forget the house in Ashiya, where I lived from 1972 to 1973.” But Tomoko is impressed by the house not only for its grandeur but also because of its inhabitants and their secrets. For Tomoko, her year in Ashiya marks a transition from childhood to young adulthood and a realization that outward appearances can be deceiving.
Looking back after 30 years, Tomoko compares her younger self to an “archaeologist looking for the perfect place to begin my research.” On the surface everything appears to be perfect. To Tomoko, the Spanish Colonial style mansion with its elegant, bespoke interiors, her handsome, well-dressed uncle, her worldly German grandmother, her brilliant cousin Mina, the full-time staff, the massive gardens, which once housed a small zoo, and the family pet Pochiko, a pygmy hippopotamus, are the stuff of legends. That is . . . until she digs deeper.
The narrative tension mounts, and life in Ashiya feels more tenuous to Tomoko as she quickly learns that her uncle is often inexplicably absent, her cousin Mina is asthmatic and overprotected, her lonely, depressed aunt drinks and smokes heavily, and her grandmother Rosa is traumatized by her past in Germany. These disturbing aspects of her glamorous family provide an undercurrent of impending doom throughout the novel.
During her stay, Tomoko unearths unsettling discoveries. It turns out that the family fortune is derived from a company the uncle heads, called Fressy, a radium-fortified beverage thought to cure all ailments. Mina the imaginative, well-read girl is frail and hospitalized numerous times throughout the novel for asthma. She is treated at home with dubious and even dangerous remedies such as Fressy and daily visits to a “light-room” that emits orange light.
The family gathers to watch the 1972 Munich Olympics where Japan wins the gold medal in volleyball, but Israeli athletes are murdered by terrorists. Mina’s popular, good-looking older brother, who is in boarding school in Switzerland, has contempt for his father; Rosa lost her twin sister in Germany; fires loom in the mountains near the house in Ashiya. Nothing feels safe or permanent.
Mina’s Matchbox is not only a compelling tale, but it is also beautifully written and constructed. The prose is clear, graceful, and engaging. Ogawa deftly weaves various motifs and themes throughout the novel including images of light and dark, life and death, the role of writing and reading, vehicles like carriages, trains, buses, and cars signifying growth, movement, and change, as well as the titular matchboxes.
The matchboxes, like everything else in the novel, contain both light and dark, positive and negative; they illuminate but are also dangerous. Always with a matchbox in her pocket, Mina is tasked with lighting all of the lights and burners in the house. Tomoko later learns that Mina collects illustrated matchboxes in which she writes stories inspired by the drawings. While the designs that prompt her writing differ widely, her stories all provide an escape and help her to confront death. Tomoko observes: “I suppose the moments when she was constructing one of these matchbox boxes were Mina’s only true chance to escape. She could wander freely, across a landscape or seascape, without having to worry about low pressure systems or exhaust fumes or steep slopes.”
While Tomoko spends only a year in Ashiya, her time there is life changing. Her world expands but also feels more precarious and insular. Mina’s Matchbox is a coming-of-age novel in that Tomoko, the narrator, learns about how to see and read more clearly. She realizes that people are complex and like radium, can heal or poison.