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81009367.Pdf Kobe University Repository : Kernel Crossing the Border Between the Real and the Unreal : The Function タイトル of the "Subterranean-ness" in Haruki Murakami's "Super-Frog Saves Title Tokyo" 著者 Oda，Tomoko Author(s) 掲載誌・巻号・ページ 海港都市研究,11:41-58 Citation 刊行日 2016-03 Issue date 資源タイプ Departmental Bulletin Paper / 紀要論文 Resource Type 版区分 publisher Resource Version 権利 Rights DOI JaLCDOI 10.24546/81009367 URL http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/handle_kernel/81009367 PDF issue: 2021-10-05 41 Crossing the Border Between the Real and the Unreal: The Function of the “Subterranean-ness” in Haruki Murakami’s “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” 尾 田 知 子 （ODA，Tomoko） Ⅰ. Introduction It has been exactly 21 years since the massive earthquake hit the Kansai area. The terrible disaster known as the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake sent as many as 6,434 people to their death, with a countless number of victims who suffered and are still suffering from certain damages [Cabinet Office, Government of Japan 2012]. The considerable magnitude of the physical and psychological trauma that the earthquake caused is still fresh in our minds. Today, in 2016, it seems likely that the devastation-stricken area has been mostly reconstructed. In reality, however, many people still remember how the Kobe earthquake shook Japan, where nobody was anticipating the occurrence of another great earthquake resulting in the worst damages in post-war Japan: the Tohoku Earthquake on 11 March 2011. Historically, natural disasters, earthquakes in particular, have caused damages in Japan since ancient times. In the literary arena, probably since the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake, it seems that the aftermaths of these earthquakes have urged some Japanese novelists to write pieces inspired by their “shaken” country.1 One of these writers is Haruki Murakami (b. 1949), a prolific and world-famous contemporary Japanese novelist, who has also translated a number of contemporary American literary works. He was born in Kyoto and brought up in Kobe; the latter of which was particularly badly devastated by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. As Murakami, who was living in the United States at that time, recollects, he was watching some television news and realiZed how the terrible disaster had damaged his birthplace [Nonaka 2012: 67]. While he began to think more about his home country as a result of the earthquake, another terrible “disaster” struck the Tokyo subway trains only two months later: the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway committed by the Aum 1 As an example of those writers, Tsunehiko Matsumoto mentions Soseki Natsume, who, in “Life” (“Jinsei,” 1896), associates an earthquake with the landscape of the human mind [Matsumoto 2008: 107]. 42 海港都市研究 Shinrikyō religious group. As soon as the several plastic bags with the chemical liquid were placed and burst open on the Tokyo subways, the ultimate effect of the sarin gas disrupted the order of the otherwise ordinary morning in central Tokyo. This terrorist attack killed twelve people and injured a large number of commuters and those who helped them, resulting in speech disorders, neurological problems, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. Murakami could not help seeing a strange link between these two calamities, although one is a natural disaster and the other a man-made criminal offence. Regardless of the apparent difference between the two events, Murakami perceives them as a symbolic sign that the Japanese national framework has been greatly swayed. He regards the double catastrophe in 1995 as a challenge against the current situation of Japan, which is sometimes questioned as a result of the end of the bubble economy and the subsequent recession causing the changing set of values [Murakami Haruki zensakuhin 1990-2000(6) 2003: 662]. Roman Rosenbaum points out the tendency of some Japanese traditional notions to connect disasters, including major earthquakes, with the necessity for “social rebirth and renewal” in a spiritual light [Rosenbaum 2014: 114]. The Aum cult, as Gabriel Philip mentions, is known to have become popular as a result of its apocalyptic teachings by their founder, Chizuo Matsumoto (Shō kō Asa hara ), which seems to have led to the violent chemical terrorist attack [Gabriel 2006: 88]. It is within such a framework that Murakami associates the January 17 Kobe Earthquake with the March 20 Aum sarin gas attack, both of which occurred in 1995. Perhaps as a result of the two terrible disasters that hit Japan, and which felt symbolic to Murakami, he experienced a crucial change in his literary stance. The novelist gradually intensified his interest in social problems [Oi 2008: 112], and wrote six short stories more or less related to these two “disasters,” which he published as Kami no kodomotachi wa mina odoru (first published in 2000), and later translated into English as after the quake (first published in 2002).2 Above all, the fifth story “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” (“Kaeru-kun Tōkyō o sukuu”) deconstructs the existing orders of “this world” and “the other world” by way of the fantastic mode, which reveals Murakami's conception of “underground evil” expressed through his representation of the subterranean-ness (chika-sei).” In other words, the fantastic mode adopted in this piece obscures 2 This paper hereafter deals with the English translation of Murakami’s works as a source text. Also, the first letter of the title of the English translation is not capitalized due to, as Jay Rubin explains, the decision of Murakami himself [Rubin 2002: 255]. 43 Crossing the Border Between the Real and the Unreal: The Function of the “Subterranean-ness” in Haruki Murakami’s “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” the borders between “this world” and “the other world,” leaving the readers with an ambivalent impression of the space as allegorical yet realistic. This paper will examine how “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” represents the subterranean world. It will analyze the function of geographical and psychological time and space. Then, it will indicate a certain relevance of the time and space to the philosopher Michel Foucault’s conception of hybrid time and space called “heterotopia.” For the discussion of psychological time and space, “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” will be compared with “Sleep,” a short story collected in The Elephant Vanishes (first published in English translation in 1993). The comparison of the two stories will point out the similarities between the two, making the argument clearer. Through these examinations, this paper will argue that this short story functions as a microcosm in which there is the slightest of margins between the real and the unreal. It will also argue that the fantastic mode applied to subterranean time and space enables the margins to be obscure. This can mirror Murakami’s critical view of the indifferent manner that present-day Japan displays toward its own people, which made it possible for the Aum cult to commit that historic chemical terrorism. Finally, this paper will demonstrate that the fantastic style emphasizes the actuality of the events in this otherwise fictional piece. It will also be demonstrated that the fantastic mode serves to warn contemporary readers about the possibility of unexpected and apparently “unreal” calamities happening in their “real” world. II. The representation of “spirituality in secularity” What each piece in after the quake has in common is the characters’ geographical and psychological distance from the Kobe earthquake, yet a similar psychic trauma caused by the quake. The characters live in the period between the Kobe Earthquake and the sarin gas attack, somewhere away from the stricken areas located not only in Japan but also abroad. The readers can notice that the characters bear, what Matthew Stretcher calls, both the “post-traumatic” stress of the earthquake and “pre-traumatic” anxiety of the upcoming sarin gas attack [Stretcher 2014: 186]. Significantly, three out of six stories in this collection have Tokyo, the spot hit by the Aum 44 海港都市研究 subway attack, as their settings.3 The geographically realistic settings of these pieces make the readers aware of the possibility that the characters may become victims (or assailants) of the actual sarin gas attack in March 1995. Thus, as Kenichiro Fukatsu relates, each piece has an air of anxiety about the invisible influence of the geographically/psychologically distant “disasters” and the possible calamity that they may cause [Fukatsu 2009: 241]. Another aspect shared by all the pieces of after the quake is geographical and psychological “subterranean-ness.” Murakami himself defines this concept as the manner in which some unexpected actions are planned, determined, and conducted in the geographically and psychologically “underground” world [Murakami Haruki zensakuhin 1990-2000(3) 2002: 270]. Murakami explains that both the Kobe earthquake and the Aum sarin gas attack came from a certain “underground” world. While an earthquake is a natural disaster that occurs due to a gap in the earth’s crust, the sarin gas attack was conducted on the Tokyo subway trains by the cult that had been “hidden” and “unseen” at the ordinary level of everyday life. It can therefore be said that the Aum cult was outside the consciousness of society and remained, or was supposed to be, “invisible,” belonging to the subconscious. In spite of the practical differences between the two incidents, Murakami finds that what they have in common is the “subterranean” violence. This violence greatly influences the victims’ psyche and remains deep inside their minds as a trauma. As Rosenbaum notes, the author’s passionate observation on the link between the “subterranean world of earthquakes” and the “subliminal human psychology” is articulated as “subterranean-ness” [Rosenbaum 2014: 102]. This can be taken as a key topic for discussing the collection.4 Critics who respond to after the quake can be simply divided into two groups: those supporting the collection and those denouncing it, in spite of subtle differences in the degree of being for and against it.
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