[8] An English translation by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen was released as a single, 704-page volume on 9 October 2018 by Alfred A. Knopf in the US[10] and by Harvill Secker in the UK.

[14] There in the attic he discovers an owl living in it and an unknown painting by Tomohiko, Killing Commendatore, depicting a scene from the opera Don Giovanni, though he notices that certain discrepancies in the details.

Meanwhile, a wealthy neighbour, Wataru Menshiki, offers him a very large sum of money to paint his portrait, which he eventually agrees to do.

Menshiki hires a construction crew to remove the rocks and they uncover a man-made pit with well-constructed stone walls about nine-feet high.

Meanwhile, the source of the bell ringing - an "Idea" [17] - reveals itself to the protagonist as a two-foot tall, apparently flesh and blood, copy of the character Commendatore from Tomohiko's painting.

Tomohiko was involved in a failed student-led assassination plot of a high-ranking Nazi officer, resulting in his lover's execution and his quiet expulsion back to Japan.

The Commendatore helps him realize that the painting is an attempt by Tomohiko to address the traumatic events that occurred to him in Germany, of which he has never spoken again.

This both mollifies Tomohiko, who slips into a coma, and causes another character from the painting—"Long Face"—to open a door to a metaphorical underworld, through which the protagonist much journey in order to rescue Mariye.

While there, she felt a mysterious connection to women's clothes stored in one of Menshiki's closets, not realizing they belonged to her deceased mother.

The protagonist and Mariye wrap Killing Commendatore and the unfinished The Man with the White Subaru Forester up and move them to the attic, out of sight.

[19] Under such classification, the publisher must not distribute the book to people under the age of 18, and it must be sealed with printed warnings on the front and back covers.

The petition declared that the decision would "bring shame to Hong Kong people" and warned that it could hurt international standing of the city's publishing and cultural sectors.

"[30] Xan Brooks from The Guardian noted the book's sense of meandering though respected Murakami's comfort in it: "His pace remains easy and unhurried.

"[32] Randy Rosenthal praised the book in his review for the Los Angeles Review of Books by writing, "By writing about metaphors and ideas, by ringing bells underground and animating two-foot-tall men, by having the desperate desires of others intrude on the simplest of plans and a whole lot else, Murakami is reminding us that the world is more enchanted than we might think.