Super-Frog Saves Tokyo By Haruki Murakami, Translated by Jay Rubin
When Katagiri, a bank employee who appears average in every way, arrives home from work on February 15, 1995, a six-foot tall frog sitting at his kitchen table announces to him that an earthquake is going to destroy Tokyo in three days’ time. Frog enlists Katagiri’s help to prevent the earthquake and save 150,000 people, proving to Katagiri, and the reader, that even the most average person can have a positive impact that reaches far beyond their own life.
Murakami’s celebrated story “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” (かえるくん、東京を救う) was written in response to the Great Hanshin earthquake that destroyed much of Kobe, Japan on January 17, 1995. The lines between fantasy and reality, dream and true experience, and the real and the imagined are blurred in this adventure; but whether or not it was “real” may not be the most important lesson.
Haruki Murakami has won numerous awards for his literary genius, not least of all being one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2015. His fiction is known for its elements of surrealism
