Excerpt from Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

This vehicle was different from any I had ridden in before. It was sturdy but cold, full of life, but without anything I could find to hold on to.

As we made our way to the platform, my mother kept repeating the same bits of advice-—"don't miss your stop, don't lose your ticket, ask the conductor if you need help"—but once I'd finally boarded the train, she suddenly fell silent, her voice reduced to sobs. She cried a good deal more that day than when my father had died, large tears dropping from the false eyelashes that were starting to pull away from her face.

After my father died, she'd supported us by working in a textile factory while doing some dressmaking on the side. But as I was about to enter middle school, she'd apparently started thinking about her future. She'd decided to pursue a year's course of study at a school in Tokyo to improve her skills as a dressmaker, with the goal of securing more stable work. After discussing it with me, we'd agreed that she would move into the school dormitory, and I would go to live with my aunt's family in Ashiya. We had no money for an apartment for the two of us in Tokyo, so we would simply have to accept my aunt's generosity.

The decision clearly worried my mother a great deal, but I was less anxious about the move. After all, this aunt was the one who had sent the baby carriage on the occasion of my birth.

At the time, my uncle was already president of the beverage company. He and my aunt had two children, a boy of eighteen and a girl a year younger than me who was still in elementary school. The boy was not living at home when I arrived, having recently left to study in Switzerland. But there was one other resident: the German grandmother who had come to live with the family. My uncle was thus half-German, my cousins one-quarter.

I had never met them, but as the most remarkable household among our relations, I had decided I liked them and believed I knew all about them, down to the smallest details. Without any cause for thinking so, I was convinced that my new life with them would go well even without my mother, a decision I'd come to based solely on the fact that they'd given me such an extraordinary carriage.

"Go on then."

Even though there was still some time before the train would leave, Mother hurried me aboard. Once I'd reached my seat, she continued to give me her final instructions from outside the window—"put your luggage in the rack; if you get warm, take off your sweater; check one more time for your ticket." As the train began to move, she wiped her tears away with one hand as she waved over and over with the other.

* * *

The moment I got off at Shin-Kobe Station, I was convinced that my premonitions had been correct. I knew without any sort of sign that the man waiting there was my uncle. He stood, totally relaxed, legs crossed, leaning against the hood of his car, in a perfectly pressed gray suit and elegant tie. His hair was brown, with soft curls, he was taller than anyone else around, and the spring sunshine lit the deep recesses around his eyes. When he saw me, he raised his hand and called out, a warm smile spreading over his face.

Having difficulty believing that a man so handsome would be smiling for me alone, I could only manage an awkward bow.

"Welcome," he said. "How was your trip on the new Shinkansen?"

My uncle bent over to look at me, then took my bag and opened the car door, as though I were a princess.

"Please," he said. His voice was deep and calm, his manner refined, his eyes the same chestnut color as his hair. My heart was pounding.

"Thank you," I managed to say at last.

As I sat down in the middle of the back seat, I realized I was in an elegant vehicle, as big as a small room and filled with an indescribable odor. The leather seats had been shined to a high gloss, and there were buttons everywhere, not only in front of the driver's seat but under the windows as well—all attesting to the vehicle's careful design. The engine was so quiet I hardly noticed that it had started before the car glided away, responding perfectly to my uncle's touch. It was only much later that I learned it was a Mercedes-Benz.

Excerpted from Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Yoko Ogawa.