ASHIYA, Japan — When Yoko Ogawa discovered “The Diary of Anne Frank” as a lonely teenager in Japan, she was so taken by it that she began to keep a diary of her own, writing to Anne as if she were a cherished friend.

To conjure the kind of physical captivity that Anne experienced, Ogawa would crawl, notebook in hand, into a drawer or under a table draped with a quilt.

“Anne’s heart and mind were so rich,” said Ogawa, now 57 and the author of more than 40 novels and story collections. “Her diary proved that people can grow even in such a confined situation. And writing could give people freedom.”

Decades later, Ogawa transmuted her imagining of Anne’s world into “The Memory Police,” a dystopian novel that is Ogawa’s fifth book to be translated into English and which goes on sale in the United States this week. It takes place on a mysterious island where an authoritarian government makes whole categories of objects or animals disappear overnight, wiping them from the memories of citizens.