A PSYCHOANALYTICAL READING OF SELECTED STORIES

FROM HARUKI MURAKAMI’S AFTER THE QUAKE

CHAPTER IV

Presentation, Analysis, and Interpretation of Data

super-frog saves tokyo: A Morbid Restoration of the Soul

A Radical Transfiguration of Nostalgic Images

Murakami’s fifth story in his collection takes a clear narrative of a

character’s journey into their own mind, namely Katagiri’s michiyuki

towards his lost soul or core. At the very beginning of this story, Katagiri

finds the “powerfully built…six feet tall” (Mr.) Frog waiting for him in his

apartment. According to Jung’s Two Essays on Analytical Psychology

(1956) the situation Katagiri’s in reflects the concept of how the

unconscious “manifest themselves…through actions, opinions, affects,

fantasies, and dreams.” (pg. 186) The character of Frog is but an

“individual memory,” representing the voices of the id. Frog, so to say, is

a radical transfiguration of Katagiri’s unconscious psyche, which is,

according to Jung, part of an individual’s persona. The purpose of Frog is

to assist the protagonist in bearing up the crushing weight of nostalgic

despair, in this case Katagiri’s unappreciated roles and responsibilities as

a brother, his health problems, sexual relationships with women, and

especially his job. This, too, echoes Lacan’s idea of the Symbolic order

wherein persons and institutions such as Katagiri’s job serve as an

authority where one must learn to fit into its ideals, and Murakami’s

monogatari or constructed ideologies imposed by a system.

The use of Frog as a metaphor for Katagiri’s unconscious psyche

reveals to what Tatsuru (in Stretcher, 2014) calls “digging a hole”

wherein the protagonist is “going beneath the surface, ” burrowing into

the “mysterious depths of the inner consciousness”, and rooting out

things that normally remain hidden from our conscious, physical gaze.

And what’s hidden is Katagiri’s lost soul, or even Lacan’s idea of

jouissance or “enjoyment.”

Monogatari or Lacan’s Symbolic Order

According to a statement by Murakami (in Stretcher) he describes

monogatari as a “logical system (or systematic logic) that surrounds and

limits you,” but along this process of “fitting in” one unconsciously (and

sometimes consciously) loses his self. This self echoes what Lacan calls

The Real wherein the real does not refer to reality--a concept rooted in
the social construction of meaning--but is radically nondiscursive--to

what resists translation into thought or words, including partial drives

(Swales, 2010). When put up with this “wall” of authorities and ideals

like Lacan’s parental Other, religious Other, educational Other, etc., a

person reacts by relinquishing their “piece of instinctual satisfaction”

enabling them to transcend to the logical system. To retrieve one’s lost

core, soul or self, one must undergo a michiyuki in the realms of the

mind.

Michiyuki and the Restoration of the Soul

Katagiri often questions why he was chosen to save Tokyo from an

earthquake, a catastrophe caused by Worm. When asked why him, Frog

answered as follows:

“Because, Mr. Katagiri, Tokyo can only be saved by a person like you.

And it’s for people like you that I am trying to save Tokyo.”

Towards the entire journey, Frog did nothing but convince Katagiri to

help him defeat Worm. Psychoanalysis tells it is Katagiri’s inner self

convincing him to save himself from the Symbolic Other, allowing

Katagiri to regain his lost soul. The restoration of the soul begins when

Katagiri agreed to meet with Frog at their destination, and Katagiri finds

himself shot by man with a blank face. This represents also a

transfiguration of a nostalgic image. Waking up with no bullet wound

nor any kind of injury, it was if it didn’t happen at all, at least in the

physical world. The restoration continues when Frog appears beside

Katagiri’s bed, explaining that they fought to the bitter end. The final

stage of restoring Katagiri’s soul is when Frog morbidly disappears, boils

bursting out, liquid oozing from his body, and bugs and worms forming

from flesh. Once these bugs entered Katagiri’s mouth and anus, he

screams wide awake, as if it also happened in a dream. Morbid as it is,

according to Stretcher, one gateway to the metaphysical world is

through the sexual organ. Once a part of Frog went inside the

protagonist, an essential part of his identity had returned. Frog went

back to the mud, metaphorically speaking, back to Katagiri’s coreless

self.