May be the super-frog was eaten by the cat he abandoned - Part 1, synopsis
'Underrstanding' is merely the sum total of our misunderstandings - Super-frog saves tokyo by Haruki Murakami
理解は誤解の総体にすぎない - 村上春樹作「かえるくん東京を救う」
Haruki Murakami was mentioned throughout various conversations, the shows, and films I've watched in past few months. So I decided to spend an afternoon reading small pieces by him. Usually I write on things I read in Japanese in Japanese, but given the fact that more than half of the conversations were with non-native Japanese speakers, I will just dump this here in English.
I was watching Shoplifters, a film from 2018 for the second time from the boredom, and I was surprised that it had a strikingly similar theme to an animation show called "mawaru-pinguindrum"; but only few - at least on the internet - were writing about them comprehensively. I was surprised; but I guess that's a story for some other day (you should check out Shoplifters if you haven't seen it!). Anyway, on the show, a short story "Super-frog saves Tokyo" was mentioned as a key that connects 1995 and 2011. So I was hoping that the story might give me some better understanding of the theme.
Suprisingly, Amazon didn't have the Kindle version of the book in Japanese, so I had to buy a version where there is an English translation on the side. With that, I bought "Neko-wo-suteru" (abandoning a cat) and few other collections of the short stories, and headed to a graveyard to read them.
For a long time, I was against the spoilers. Probably because I was never a novel person (never a noble person either). Only genre that I was reading was a mystery, and for those, spoilers were worse than getting my parents killed. That changed, when my uncle told me that the plots in a novel is only half, the most important thing is how the messages are expressed in a written form. I still overreact on spoilers as a joke, so yeah, don't take me seriously if I ever done that.
With that said, I'm going to spoil what the story is about, but my version is not as half as good as the novel itself, so I strongly recommend reading it (or I can lend it to you!).
Okay, of course there is a website with full translation! What happened to the copyright laws nowadays...
Anyway, here is my version of the synposis.
The story begins with a guy named Katagiri finding a big frog (Kaeru-kun) in his flat. According to the frog, there will be an Earth quake in Tokyo in three days and it needs Katagiri's help on stopping it.
According to the frog, there is a worm in the underground of Tokyo. The worm is sleeping most of the time, but accumulating the anger over years and years. The Earthquake that happened in January 1995 woke him up from the comfortable sleep, and he is apparently snapped. When the worm gets furious, it causes an Earthquake that destroys Tokyo.
Katagiri is a guy who works in a bank as debt collector. He doesn't have friends, lover, or wife and that's part of the reason he is doing that job. His parents were dead for a long time. He funded his younger siblings through the university, and they (he is the oldest) got married long time ago, and he has never seen them since then. With his never ending loneliness and self-esteem that is literally non-existent, he had no emotion to feel, he was fearless as he has nothing to lose. Even the Yakuzas were scared of him.
Maybe that's why the frog asked him for the help. The frog told him, that Katagiri that he is the one with a sense of justice and kindness; and he should be more appreciated. But on the day before they fight the worm, he got shot by a man during his work - or at least, he thought he got shot.
He woke up in a hospital, and realized that it was past the day frog said there is an earthquake. He asked the nurse if there was an earth quake, she said no, "what about the man who shot me", she said "you weren't got shot, you suddenly fell in the middle of a street". According to the nurse, he was kept saying "frog" when he was asleep.
As the nurse left the room, the frog comes in; and tells him what happened. The frog fought alone, but with Katagiri's cheering from his honest heart, the frog was able to fight off the worm, the frog couldn't win, they drawn, but still enough to stop the Earthquake. After the frog told him the story, the frog inflated and popped; from the inside, worms came out and disappeared in the walls of the room.
The nurse comes back with more medicine. Katagiri murmured "frog", the nurse asked if the frog was important for him. Katagiri answered "more than anyone".
Okay, I have a lot of things to talk about this, but I'm too tired for today. I think the next post will be tomorrow or day after. Fingers crossed.
Part 2 ↓
