Super-Frog Saves Tokyo

Haruki Murakami is well known for his use of magical realism within his stories. One such story was “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,” a story about a man who meets a giant, talking humanoid frog that seeks his help in preventing a catastrophic earthquake by defeating Worm, the source of the earthquake. One of the standout characteristics of magical realism is that stories are usually told or narrated from a dream-like state. This is very much the case in “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo,” in which at one point Katagiri is to meet with Frog before their fight with Worm, and at another Katagiri wakes up in a hospital bed, having been shot. Frog visits Katagiri in the hospital, saying Katagiri was of much help and that their fight with Worm was over and they succeeded. Frog then proceeds to decay and melt as bugs start coming out of his body, giving the impression that Frog dies. The story jumps to Katagiri being woken up by the nurse, who says that Katagiri was having a nightmare. At this point, readers are unsure of whether or not Frog was actually there, or if Frog was a figment of Katagiri’s psyche or imagination. Was Frog real, or was Frog a manifestation or symbol of some sort that is supposed to mean something to Katagiri? With this in mind, is Frog’s supposed “death” symbolic in any way for either Katagiri or the story in general?