The economy was booming. People had more money than they knew what to do with. & then the earthquake struck. For the characters in After the Quake, the Kobe earthquake is an echo from a past they buried long ago. Satsuki has spent thirty years hating one man: a lover who destroyed her chances of having children. Did her desire for revenge cause the earthquake? Junpei`s estranged parents live in Kobe. Should he contact them? Miyake left his family in Kobe to make midnight bonfires on a beach hundreds of miles away. Fourteen-year-old Sala has nightmares that the Earthquake 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 burrowing worm. ` When he gets angry, he causes earthquakes, ` says Frog. ` And right now he is very, very angry.` This new collection of stories, from one of the world`s greatest living writers, dissects the violence beneath the surface of modern Japan.