Super Frog Saves Katagari

Katagari, the main character in Haruki Murakami’s Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, is a middle-aged debt collector. Since the end of the 1980’s and the end of Japan’s “bubble era” economy, debt collectors had been hated by society and Katagari was no different. To society, he was a dreg, a no body who only pesters them and reminds of a prosperous time now gone. Then, he met Frog a personification of his super- ego and embarks on a quest only Katagari can do to stop Worm, a personification of his Id (Murakami). It is through his quest with Frog that Katagari comes to terms with his place in society and that despite not mattering to society, he still has a purpose.

Katagari is single, 40 and is always being looked down upon by all those around him, so it makes sense that Frog is a personification of his super ego. This is- because according to Sigmund Freud’s The Dissection of the Psychical Personality, “In the course of development the superego also takes on the influences of those who have stepped into the place of parents—educators, teachers, people chosen as ideal models” (Freud,64). It would make sense that a person like Katagari would make a superhero his ideal model: someone who is extraordinary, who gets praised and admired and someone who always selfless even when it doesn’t benefit them. And in the end, Katagari wants that. But his place in society prevents that. While talking to Frog, Frog mentions how he raised his two siblings when his parents died and even set up their lives to be easy and successful at the expense of his own and still, his siblings hated him but like a hero would do, he didn’t complain (Murakami, 4). And even when he had to save Tokyo from Worm, he wasn’t going to get any admiration, but he still did it because that is what a hero would do.

The Worm shares many similarities with the Id. According to Freud, the Id is a dark place in our mind and it’s inaccessible to our personality (Freud, 72). Unlike the devil in the shoulder media portrays it as, the Id has no morality, no sense of good and evil and only exist for satisfaction. The Worm fits Murakami’s model of the human mind discussed by Matthew Strecher’s Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the fiction of Haruki Murakami in which he states that “Murakami’s model of the human mind is fairly uniform throughout his literature… In general it is presented as a uniformly coded division between the world of the light and that of the dark, the latter corresponding to the unconscious realm. Murakami envisions the inner world of the mind as dark, cold, and lifeless” (Strecher, 270). Worm shares this parallel with the unconscious since is an unfeeling mass that lives under Tokyo that doesn’t like to do much except sleep in darkness and grow due to rumbles and reverberations which it then turns into anger (Murakami, 3). Katagari is always surrounded by hatred and animosity due to his line of work. He has to deal with people trying to kill him while collecting debts and he also has to deal with his co-workers and boss disrespecting him despite him being a flawless worker. And despite it all, doesn’t complain. By him keeping his feelings bottled up, it makes sense that Worm, a dark inaccessible part of him that he didn’t even know was there, grows bigger and more dangerous and becomes filled of hatred as time goes on- one could even say Worm is the society in which Katagari lives in. Worm is also like a real-life worm: it keeps growing so long as it’s underground and feeding off the dead carcasses and Worm lives on the darkness of Katagari’s mind keeps getting bigger by feeding off Katagari’s latent displacement in society.

Katagari’s quest is that of identity. At the beginning of the story, Katagari is a character that is fine with life, despite him being hated by everyone around him. His sister and brother hate him, his co-workers don’t think much of him and the only people that come close to showing Katagari any form of respect are the gangsters that he collects debts from. Overall, Katagari is complacent with life. Even when a giant 6-foot frog showed up to his flat and asked him to stop an earthquake caused by a Worm, he seemed to only to want to help Frog to get it over with. It was, ironically, Frog’s death that was the catalyst for Katagari wanting to change his attitude toward himself. Frog, as stated before, is a representation of what Katagari wants to be- his idol, his super-ego, his hero. But at the end of it all, he decays and dies which is the death of Katagari’s ideals of being the hero. When Frog dies, he is eaten by the remnants of Worm- it being a representation of society- and this is symbolic for how Katagari will never be a part of society. This is hinted at by Frog in his references to Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, especially when he said” “I would fight on alone. My chances of beating him by myself are perhaps just slightly better than Anna Karenina’s chances of beating that speeding locomotive” (Murakami, 7). And as it turns out, Frog had to ultimately fight Worm alone, since Katagari never showed up to help him. Although Katagari did help Frog fight Worm, he still lost to Worm, just like Anna lost her life to the train. Katagari is shown to, at the end of it all want to change. This was shown when, as he saw Frog dying, he told himself, “As soon as I get out of this hospital, he thought, I’ll buy Anna Karenina and “White Nights” and read them both. Then I’ll have a nice, long literary discussion about them with Frog” (Murakami, 9). He, at this point wanted to give his life more purpose. He wanted to do something else, something he normally wouldn’t do and that was read a book, discuss something with someone, even if that someone was Frog. But Frog wasn’t the only one dead, Worm was, too. No longer would Katagari be haunted by not fitting in society, nor would he be haunted by dreams of wanting to be extraordinary, hence his ultimate “restful, dreamless sleep” (Murakami, 10).

Before dying, Frog tells Katagari that not everything he sees is real, something which Patricia Welch comments on in her article Haruki Murakami’s Storytelling World. She says that “these words encapsulate the struggle that Murakami’s protagonists face. Lonely and isolated, they must nevertheless battle to forge an authentic identity in a dystopic world” (Welch, 59), which applies to Katagari as a character. He, at the end of it all had to change as a person, since his environment and his wants were always at odds with one another, exposing Katagari’s self-destructive tendencies. This was shown when he was talking to Frog about how unqualified he was, even telling him that he is growing bald and that he has a potbelly and diabetic tendencies. Although he doesn’t state it, him growing bald can be attributed to his stressful job, since after all, he does have to deal with many criminals and a wrong move could be fatal and the diabetic tendencies can be attributed to Katagari not taking good- enough care of his body, hence showing how self-destructive Katagari can be. However, not everything Katagari sees has to be reality, hence why he can be a choose to be different in a world that doesn’t care about him because no matter what, his position in life won’t change. Even if he is, he will never be a hero, he will never be admired, so he must take solace in the fact that he can only rely on himself at the end of the day.

Katagari, at the end of the day learned the lesson that even if society doesn’t care about one, one should care of themselves. Through the battle between Worm and Frog, Katagari was able to come to terms with his role in society as well as well as find purpose in his life.

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