Yoko Ogawa's 'Mina’s Matchbox' sparkles with quiet intimacy

As the recipient of literary accolades ranging from the Akutagawa and Yomiuri prizes to the Shirley Jackson and the American Book awards, Yoko Ogawa is one of the most accomplished Japanese authors of the past 30 years. She is also arguably one of the most eclectic.

In Japanese, Ogawa has published at least 52 books with around 19 different publishers, covering remarkably wide-ranging genres and themes, including 14 works of nonfiction plus a translation. She has written a touching story about a friendship between a math professor, who can retain new memories for only 80 minutes, and his housekeeper’s son (“The Housekeeper and the Professor”), a science fiction novel about an island whose inhabitants slowly forget objects and concepts (“The Memory Police”), and a triptych of psychological horror stories centered on womanhood and alienation (“The Diving Pool”). She has also written a macabre short story collection in the same vein as Edgar Allen Poe (“Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales”) as well as books introducing scientific concepts to a general audience.

All this means that her latest work to hit English-language bookshelves — “Mina’s Matchbox,” translated by Stephen Snyder and released by Pantheon Books — deserves ample excitement.

Mina’s Matchbox, by Yoko Ogawa. Translated by Stephen Snyder. 288 pages, PANTHEON BOOKS, Fiction.

Advertised as “an elegant jewel box of a book,” “Mina’s Matchbox” tells the story of the young Tomoko as she moves in with her aunt’s wealthy family. Her handsome uncle is the head of a vast soda empire and presides over a quirky household in a fantastically opulent mansion. Tomoko quickly bonds with Mina, her frail but brilliant cousin who owns a collection of illustrated matchboxes inscribed with stories of wonder and magic. As they grow into womanhood together, Tomoko and Mina build a precious but fragile relationship. Meanwhile, a German great-aunt, a pet pygmy hippopotamus, an often absent yet beloved patriarch and mysterious quirks and shards of lore about this strange family glitter in the background. Ogawa constructs the novel around Tomoko’s enjoyment of exploring this new world, which recalls the grandeur of European-influenced Japanese nobility.

“Mina’s Matchbox” occupies a strange position in Ogawa’s catalog. It doesn’t attain the magnitude of psychological thrill and literary experimentation of “The Memory Police.” It doesn’t probe the twisted nature of human character as deeply as “The Diving Pool,” and it isn’t as entertaining or heartwarming as “The Housekeeper and the Professor.” Instead, “Mina’s Matchbox” has a little bit of everything: a complicated sexual awakening, splashes of magical realism and amusing diversions about Pochiko, the pygmy hippo, and Fressy, the blue beverage that skyrocketed Tomoko’s family into stupendous wealth. An elegant, at-times overwrought prose style, skillfully rendered by Snyder, is well-suited to the stately atmosphere of the manse.

But rather than a concise and gripping tale, the novel is more like a playground for Ogawa’s interest in particular details: the minutiae of striking matches, playing volleyball and searching for typos, to name a few. She also does not shy away from the quagmires of history that entwine with the novel, particularly the 1972 Munich Olympics and the Munich massacre, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes. Ogawa’s recounting does not play a crucial role in the story, but it looms large over the current moment in which the Israeli-Palestinian crisis occupies an especially contested place in social discourse, as well as in Ogawa’s meta-world, as Anne Frank and the Holocaust take center stage in many of her writings. The role of the Holocaust, Jewish and German identity, and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is sticky, strange and arguably clumsy. They aren’t, however, not entirely out of place in a novel that seems to relish unresolved encounters — not just between characters and places, but between ideas as well.

“Mina’s Matchbox” feels more familiar in the tradition of Latin American magical realism, especially Isabel Allende’s “The House of the Spirits” and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “100 Years of Solitude,” with its enigmatic family lore and the rich, sophisticated practices of a fallen era. But Ogawa does not seem to aspire to paint a grand canvas of politics, history and ethics like these modern classics do — Tomoko is occupied mostly with exploring the mansion and trying to encourage Mina’s first romance. By comparison, Ogawa’s tale is as small and intimate as the stories that Mina writes inside her intricately illustrated, handcrafted matchboxes. The story has a limited and even tenuous scope, but it’s still one that sparks the imagination toward faraway places.

Perhaps this quality is best described by a moment in the book when Tomoko and Mina stay up all night to watch what is supposed to be the greatest meteor shower in 13 years. However, not a single meteor falls from the sky. To Tomoko, the real shooting star is in the wavering, lit match in Mina’s tender hands. “Mina’s Matchbox” isn’t a comet of a novel, but it’s at the least a small flame recalling comets that may or may not ever be.