Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Agawa
It's 1972. April. Thirteen-year-old Tomoko has just arrived at her aunt and uncle's house in the mountains outside of Ashiya, Japan. Their daughter, Mina, is twelve, severely asthmatic, and rides a pygmy hippopotamus named Pochiko to school every day. Mina’s Matchbox follows Tomoko and Mina's year of friendship, helping each other find beauty in the mundane. Mina collects matchboxes and writes stories based on the designs on the boxes. She keeps these stories under her bed, sharing them with no one, until Tomoko.
The two of them have something between a crush and an obsession on two young men they see regularly but are too afraid to ask their names. For Mina, it's The Young Man From Wednesday, who delivers beverages to her family's house every week. For Tomoko, it's Mr. Turtleneck, a librarian at the local library.
Together they make adventures out of their everyday lives: A brief obsession with volleyball, a trip to see a once in a lifetime meteor shower. But the adventurous spirit really comes out when Mina share's her matchbox stories with Tomoko.
While the novel doesn't have any major conflict or mystery, the 13-year-old narrator makes everything feel as exciting and high stakes as it possibly could. An uncle who occasionally goes out of town becomes the subject of her very own investigation.
The story feels incredibly real and authentic to what it is to be a kid. Nearly from the beginning Agawa evokes a nostalgia that made me yearn for a distant childhood that wasn't quite mine. Tomoko and Mina were cousins, but over the course of Tomoko's year in Ashiya, they became something like sisters.
There were several moments while I was reading this novel that reminded me of a specific moment in my childhood. When we were around 10 years old, my twin sister proudly announced to me on a summer afternoon: "I made a swing in the front yard. Come try it!" As her more timid, less adventurous counterpart, I was skeptical, but I also trusted her with my life. So I went outside, sat on the swing (a car seat balanced on a piece of rope hanging from a tree), and immediately starting swinging. I fell off. The car seat was not in any way attached to the rope. I probably cried, or more likely I screamed. My sister just said. "Thanks. It's not done yet, but I wanted to see if the car seat would work." She then attached the seat to the rope, and our very own swing was completed.
I saw parts of Mina and Tomoko in both my sister and I, and I think anyone who has ever been a kid (everyone) will see a bit of themselves in these two characters. Or if nothing else, you'll be entertained by the antics of the Pochiko the pygmy hippo.
I recommend this story to anyone who wants a happy–but not cliché, story of childhood. If you have dreams where you are a kid again and wake up feeling a deep melancholy for a time gone by, this book is for you. But above all, this book is for anyone with a sister that they love very much, who they shared adventures and secrets with, who taught them things they never would have learned on their own.
