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This month, November 2024, we are reading Mina's Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa, English translation by Stephen B. Snyder.
(You may recognize Snyder as the translator of Out by Kirino.)

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

In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves Okayama (a coastal city on the inland sea) for Ashiya (a suburb of Kobe, a more prominent city on the inland sea) to stay with her aunt’s family while her mother leaves the Okayama area far behind and moves to Tokyo to study. 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.��

A small correction: Tomoko leave Okayama (a coastal city on the inland sea) for Ashiya (a suburb of Kobe, a more prominent city on the inland sea). Her mother leaves the area far behind and moves to Tokyo to study.

Sigh. Email notifications are broken on messages as well as threads. Your group-wide message will probably reach far fewer people than it did last month.

I started reading it yesterday (a bit early) and am really enjoying it so far. (view spoiler)[I kind of hope for a family secret, but I'll wait patiently haha. (hide spoiler)]

(author's last name in the title of the thread is misspelled, should be Ogawa not Ozawa)

Carola wrote: "I started reading it yesterday (a bit early) and am really enjoying it so far. [spoilers removed]

(author's last name in the title of the thread is misspelled, should be Ogawa not Ozawa)"

Corrected, thank you Carola.
r/Jack

Bill wrote: "A small correction: Tomoko leave Okayama (a coastal city on the inland sea) for Ashiya (a suburb of Kobe, a more prominent city on the inland sea). Her mother leaves the area far behind and moves t..."

Thanks Bill. I will correct the above and get the description in ŷ������ book listing, where this is from, corrected also.
r/Jack

Bill wrote: "A small correction: Tomoko leave Okayama (a coastal city on the inland sea) for Ashiya (a suburb of Kobe, a more prominent city on the inland sea). Her mother leaves the area far behind and moves t..."

ŷ������ no longer supports many former email notifications to members' personal emails - officially stopped a while ago. The internal messaging system should operate as normal though. For some notifications on reviews/from groups in general may have to check your settings and make sure you tick the right boxes so get the internal ones. Mine are fine but some friends stopped getting theirs for comments on their reviews etc There's even a GR group about the changes:

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Wrt to notifications, it is also a somewhat heated discussion in the Moderators Support Group: /topic/show/...

I’m not finished yet (30 more pages to go) but I’ve found at least three mistakes/continuity errors so far��

Why is this librarian recommending House of the Sleeping Beauties to a 13 year old girl??

well this may be my comeback to the japanese litterature group reads after a very long break where I did not read any japanese authors.... or not many anyway (who can keep count ....)
the dutch translation with a very beautiful cover was on sales for 5.74 euros, it is travelling towards me. Can't wait, I do love Ogawa, even though Revenge still gives me shivers when I remember it....

Nice to see you all again ! Nice to meet you to the more recent new contributors !

Carola wrote: "I’m not finished yet (30 more pages to go) but I’ve found at least three mistakes/continuity errors so far��"

due to the narrative ? or possible translation errors ?

never found anything like that in the Ogawa's I read...

Agnetta wrote: "well this may be my comeback to the japanese litterature group reads after a very long break where I did not read any japanese authors.... or not many anyway (who can keep count ....)
the dutch tra..."

Welcome back Agnetta. Is the Dutch translator Luk Van Haute?
I want to add the translator to the notes. Thank you.

Jack wrote: "Agnetta wrote: "well this may be my comeback to the japanese litterature group reads after a very long break where I did not read any japanese authors.... or not many anyway (who can keep count ......"
Correct, Luk Van Haute. /book/show/1...
have you seen that beautiful cover ?!
(as most of us know buying books and reading books are two separate and mostly independent hobbies :D )

That's an adorable cover! I think many of the covers for this book are pretty good :)

Carola wrote: "That's an adorable cover! I think many of the covers for this book are pretty good :)"

The UK cover is supposed to represent the matchbox artwork—like Mina's story is // to the kind of story she might have written? I wonder how many other covers are trying to do the same thing.

The covers are lovely and fit the story in that sense, but they also create the impression the story as more whimsical than it actually is.

This was my review if anyone is interested.


Maybe some observations I'd repeat again:

-Mina’s Matchbox takes place in 1972. Author Yoko Ogawa herself was ten years old that year, and the entire novel reads with an especially personal and poignant atmosphere of nostalgia.

-The book jacket description promises “a family on the edge of collapse�� that the novel doesn’t quite deliver. Yes, Tomoko comes to understand Mina’s family’s dynamics—even participates in bringing the family peace—but Mina’s family drama is really no more and no less exciting than the drama of any other family of her social class.

-Mina’s Matchbox is instead a truly beautiful coming-of-age novel written from a mature adult’s perspective. Tomoko, the narrator, occasionally breaks into the story at a chapter’s opening or close to add the benefit of her wisdom or hindsight.

-Tomoko, the narrator, occasionally breaks into the story at a chapter’s opening or close to add the benefit of her wisdom or hindsight. It’s her coming-of-age tale—but it’s Mina’s coming-of-age story, too... The narrative reads like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, with Tomoko standing in for Scout Finch to Mina’s Jem.

-In some ways, Mina’s Matchbox is a coming-of-age story for Japan as well. It’s difficult to ignore the pure opulence of Mina’s home... But the high life that Mina’s family lives won’t last forever. Many non-Japanese think about Japan’s “great economic miracle�� as a period spanning from around the end of the American Occupation in April 1952 until the Japanese real estate bubble burst in 1989. In truth, while Japan did experience sustained economic growth for the better part of four decades, the true “economic miracle�� ended with the Arab oil embargo in 1973. After 1973, lifestyles like the one lived by Mina’s family were increasingly built on debt. Fifteen years after the novel takes place, they became completely out of reach for the overwhelming majority of Japanese families.

I wonder if the setting of Mina's Matchbox will bring to mind The Makioka Sisters in Japanese readers. Both are set in Ashiya.

I liked Mina’s Matchbox but not as much as some of Ogawa’s other writings. I read it slowly over two weeks, a few chapters at a time, to give myself time to think about the story. Because of events in the USA at the time of reading, the book didn’t get the focus it deserved from my reading.

It was interesting to note that a national sport was an element of the story, similar to the same in The Housekeeper and the Professor.

I will listen to the audiobook in the near future and update the review for that.

Alison wrote: "This was my review if anyone is interested.


Maybe some observations I'd repeat again:

-Mina’s Matchbox takes place in 1972. Au..."

I thought especially illuminating were your comments related to the historic context of the novel.

I remember the main event in Ashiya - The Makioka Sisters is an immense flashflood - mudslide - focussed on a particular gully with a main arterial bridge carrying road and rail-lines being swept away. I think in the Tanizaki novel - it was a real event - but in the novel, a metaphor for the need for destruction before a new order can emerge. People will suffer, lives will be lost - the city will evolve and humans must continually adapt to changes they cannot control.
I'll have to get a copy of Mina's Matchbox - sounds good.

I didn't like it and I won't be reading anything else from this author.

The audiobook of Mina’s Matchbox just became available from the library. I have just started and will update the comment on my impressions. I expect it will be much better for me then my reading of the printed text.
(Update) 25% through the audiobook and it is much, much better.

@Misa

I didn't care for it, either. But don't give up on Ogawa! Her novels have a wide range of theme and style, and you might like some of them.

Jack wrote: "Alison wrote: "This was my review if anyone is interested.


Maybe some observations I'd repeat again:

-Mina’s Matchbox takes pl..."

Thanks!

The audiobook, narrated by Nanako Mizushima, was very good and fully earned 4 stars.

Her website is:

I would like to hear her other audiobooks especially Sylvia & Aki and The House of the Lost on the Cape.

I recently finished this. Though a bit mundane for my taste, I don’t hate it at all. I actually enjoyed it for that purpose. I’ve yet to read her other works, and I want to read Memory Police soon. If you didn’t like this work from her, I’ve heard only stellar things about memory police!

I could not continue with reading, other priorities and so on , so it will be later update from my side.

the first chapters I did like though. Nice style, and I did enjoy the sense of "wonder" that Ogawa inculcates into the narrator, and how everything is at the same time absurd and "normal".

I mean... a girl going to school seated on a hippo ! but strangely I just accept it and let myself be carried away with the story.

I am just glad for now it is not as dark as Ogawa can get sometimes, so I was enjoying it and will get back to it as time permits.