the economy was booming. people had more money than they knew what to do with. and then, the earthquake struck. komura``s wife follows the tv reports from morning to night, without eating or sleeping. the same images appear again and again: flames, smoke, buildings turned to rubble, their inhabitants dead, cracks in the streets, derailments, crashes, collapsed expressways, crushed subways, fires everywhere. pure hell. suddenly, a city seems a fragile thing. and life too. tomorrow anything could happen. for the characters in murakami``s latest short story collection, the kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. satsuki has spent 30 years hating one man: a lover who destroyed her chances of having children, and who now lives in kobe. did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? junpei``s estranged parents also live in kobe. should he contact them? miyake left his family in kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. four-year-old sala has nightmares that the eathquake man is trying to stuff her inside a little box. katagiri returns home to find a giant frog in his apartment on a mission to save tokyo from a massive worm burrowing under the tokyo security trust bank. when he gets angry, he causes earthquakes says frog. and right now he is very, very angry.