1. Introduction

The reception of Killing Commendatore in China and Japan has been polarised both at home and abroad. The mainstream Japanese critics believe that this long novel has all the elements of Haruki Murakami's works so far. It is true that the technique of "metaphor" is very common in Murakami's works, and it is not the first time that he mentions the "Nanking Massacre" and Japan's invasion of China, and surrealism is also a style that often appears in his works. However, the universal narrative of WWII and the Nazis in the West, the universal revelation of the evil of human nature, and the expression of the self-reconciliation of the human heart in the midst of the evil of human nature are not common in his previous works. In addition, the book's direct revelation of Nanking Massacre leds to an uproar once it is sold in Japan. The Japanese right-wing even severely criticises the book and demands to no longer be sold. However, Japanese academics are mostly positive about the view of war conveyed in the book, with positive comments instead taking the majority.

In China, the reception of Killing Commendatore has also been polarised. Most of the studies focus on the Nanjing Massacre mentioned in the book, and take it as the centre of radioactive research. Some studies think that the book inherits Haruki Murakami's previous inheritance of historical responsibility and narration of war memory, some think that the book is derived from memory crisis, showing crisis awareness and war reflection, and some studies take the "paintings" in the text as a starting point to introduce the memory of violence into painting images. Some studies start with the "painting" in the text, importing the memory of violence into the images of paintings. All in all, at present, domestic scholars' evaluation of Killing Commendatore is always based on the historical perspective of the material as the historical evidence of the Nanjing Massacre, and most of them leave aside the consideration of the literary quality of Killing Commendatore. In this regard, this paper will start from the "concept" and "metaphor" in the "manifest concept" and "flux metaphor" of Killing Commendatore. In this regard, this paper will discuss the specific connotations and cross-narratives of the two in the "manifest idea" and "flux metaphor" in Killing Commendatore.

2. On the three-layered idea and its metaphors in Killing Commendatore

Idea is the key word in the whole novel. In Japanese, the word "idea" is written as " ｲﾃﾞｱ"(i.e., meaning "idea"), which can be understood through Plato's idea. In The Republic, Plato uses "bed" as an example to explain the idea, that is, "a bed made by a god, a bed made by a carpenter, and a bed made by a painter". The bed made by a god, i.e., the "natural bed", is the real bed, the essence of the existence of things, and also the "idea". The man-made bed, on the other hand, also refers to the fact that real life is an imitation and reproduction of the metaphysical world of "ideas". The bed made by the painter is the "reproduction of the reproduction", which is also the projection of the essence of things. The world of the text consists of these three different layers of connotation: the metaphysical "commendatore", the real life in which "I" exist, and the different paintings that exist as works of art, which together constitute the world of "idea" in the text. In an interview, Lin Shao-hua also said that the idea of Killing Commendatore could be said to come from the theory of Plato's "three beds", and could even be said to be a literary interpretation of the theory of "three beds." [1].

Metaphor in Killing Commendatore is used throughout the story and in the world of ideas. The concept of "metaphor" is introduced in Aristotle's Poetics and The Art of Rhetoric as early as the 3rd century BC. Scholars have inherited and developed the ideas of Aristotle and Plato, and the most influential theory of metaphor is developed by the famous linguists George Lakoff and Johnson Mark. The most influential theory of metaphor is the "conceptual metaphor" put forward by the famous linguists George Lakoff and Johnson Mark in "Metaphors We Live By". They argue that metaphor is not limited to the realm of language, but that the activity of the human mind itself is also a metaphor. It is a phenomenon of consciousness - not only in language, but also in thought and behaviour. Lakoff points out that conceptual metaphors exist in the human subconscious, whereas humans are used to understanding things in this way that they often do not realise that it is a metaphor.

Metaphor is a metaphorical device that uses one thing to imply another without making explicit comparisons using "like" or "as" as in explicit metaphors, and conveys a certain meaning by comparing one phenomenon to another. Metaphors are constructed on the basis of semantic proximity between the states, properties and behaviours describing these phenomena in order to name other objects. Through metaphors, we are able to combine ideas and concepts between different things with each other in a single word or expression, and through this combination to convey a particular meaning. "Metaphor, as a distinctive feature of Haruki Murakami's works, is embodied in Killing Commendatore, which creates a rich character identity and allows many motives for behaviour and the roots of ideas to be traced. In this paper, we will explore in detail the metaphorical connotations of the different character orientations.

Metaphor plays an important role in our cognitive process as an expression of human rationality and analogical ability. Modern cognitive science usually defines metaphor as a fundamental mental operation. People do not only use metaphors to express their thoughts, but they also employ the aesthetic potential of metaphors to think about and understand the world in which they live. Metaphors help people to change the way they express themselves in the linguistic world, transforming new concepts into more familiar representations. In Killing Commendatore, the connotations of metaphor are expressed through three layers of the idea world. In the conceptual world, "commendatore" as a metaphysical concept is a metaphor for the proposition of Japan's longstanding memory crisis, which in turn symbolises the status quo and crisis faced by Japanese culture. In the real world, metaphors run through the life experiences of the three of us, "I", Tomohiko Amada, and Mousai, symbolising the inner meaning behind the experiences and the darkness of the back of the personality. In the art world, the most obvious "metaphor" is "The White Subaru Man", and in addition to this, "The Hole in the Wood" also has a specific symbolic meaning behind it. Metaphor and idea, as the two main concepts of the novel, intertwine and merge with each other to form a dark world of ideas and metaphors.

3. The commendatore - the metaphysical embodiment of the "idea"

As the idea, the commendatore calls himself "idea", a being close to awakening, the sum total of all things. At the same time, the image of the Idea contains its symbol as a metaphor.

The commendatore here is a metaphor for the crisis of memory that has long characterised Japanese society. The commendatore exists as a source of other-knowledge, and where there is no other-knowledge, the idea cannot exist. Therefore, the image of the commendatore unites Japanese society's views and memories of the war. When I ask him about the painting "Killing Commendatore," he replies, "in history, there were many events that are left in the dark like that for good. Correct knowledge did not necessarily enrich. Objectivity did not necessarily override subjectivity. Facts did not necessarily blow away delusions." [2]If someone wants to bring these darknesses hidden in the long river of history back into the light is "to let a hundred holes and holes come to the surface is a waste of anyone's efforts"[2]. This represents the Japanese government's longstanding practice of avoiding talking about WWII and denying the atrocities, and it is also an artistic interpretation of the displacement or substitution technique and even the historical revisionist movement.

Although the figure of the "commendatore" is a character from Asuka period, it is essentially a Western story with a spiritual core, representing the cultural loss of Japanese society. After WWII, Japan's national economy was in a precarious state of near collapse, and it had to rely on the US military for support. Culturally, it also received the impact of Western culture more strongly, shaking the cultural confidence of the Japanese. The same was true of Japanese art: "it was on the ruins of such a totality that Japanese art struggled to get off the ground, and the paintings of this period, though still war-themed, no longer celebrated the so-called 'heroism' of earlier times, but rather sought to forget nightmarish memories. For the younger generation of painters, war was no longer a martyred 'heroic story', but a human tragedy.[3] The Western image of the "commendatore" in the form of Japanese paintings is a reflection of this situation. Although he is dressed in Japanese paintings, the Knight Commander is the spirit of Western culture. In the end, the commendatore forces "me" to kill myself, but why does the commendatore have to be killed? One reason is that "I" open the well in the first place so that he can appear, so I have to kill him so that the "ring" can be closed; the other reason is that it is because of the rebellion and abandonment of the Western spiritual core, the rediscovery of the Japanese culture, and the confrontation with the rise of the East Asian cultural circle. The second is the rebellion and abandonment of the Western spiritual core, the rediscovery of Japanese culture, and the confrontation with the rise of the East Asian cultural circle.

4. The world of the senses—self-reconciliation to "violence"

The "commendatore", as a concept, gives various hints to the events in the sensory world from the perspective of an omniscient God. Through his hints, "I" discover the secret of Tomohiko Amada, and Mousai,, who are related to me, and achieved the reconciliation of the three of them through various events.

4.1. Tomohiko Amada

The discovery of the painting "Killing Commendatore" gradually brought to light the personal history of Tomohiko Amada. After he failed to assassinate a high-ranking Nazi official, his lover was brutally murdered, none of his companions were spared, and his own psychological defences collapsed after being tortured in a "sadistic" manner. His former self was tortured to death and buried in his inner world, along with the history that no one knew. The death of his younger brother has become a "forbiddentopic" that no one talked about. He was the son of a wealthy family with artistic talent, a sensitive and honest man, but he was sent to war by accident. However, he was accidentally sent to the battlefield and took part in the atrocities of the "Nanking Massacre". His hands, which used to be used for playing the piano and carrying music, were forced to take up a sabre and kill the captives, leaving him with a huge post-war trauma, and he committed suicide by slitting his wrists in the attic of his house. This incident was also one of the major reasons why Tomohiko Amada was involved in the plan to assassinate high-ranking Nazi officials.

After he finished his study and returned from Vienna, the two most obvious changes in Amada's life took place. In terms of his personal feelings, he changed from his usual flirtatious behaviour and "stopped looking for women", or at least did not "sow his wild oats". After being removed from his pampered childhood, exposed to violent conflict, and experiencing the real bloodshed of war and atrocities, as well as the torturous death of his beloved lover, he can no longer remain aloof from the situation. The atrocities of the state, the bloodshed of oppression, and the sorrows of the times are no longer mere airbrushes that can't affect him, but real events that are closely related to him. This is undoubtedly a devastating blow to Amada, who has been trained in militarism. What militarism and violent aggression have brought to him is not the expansion of the country and the dividends of war, but the loss of family and love, the destruction and distortion of human nature, and the crisis of humanitarianism. The development of science and technology has not brought the human civilisation as imagined, but the war and violent oppression that burnt it to the ground. As a painter, Amada must have felt this deeply, as a sensitive artist who faced with such a drastic change, his personal desires and ideals gradually disappeared along with the bloodshed he witnessed. In terms of artistic creation, Amada completely abandoned Western painting and devoted himself to Japanese painting, and perhaps the moment he decided to change his speciality, the painting "Killing Commendatore", which is presented in Japanese painting as a metaphorical confession, is set in his mind. "There were gathered there all sorts and sorts of his deep feelings. He drew this picture with his own blood and cut his own flesh" [4]. The spiritual destruction and burial of his past makes his ideal of creating Western paintings die with him, and the burial of his study experience in Vienna makes it impossible for him to touch the forbidden land in his heart, and Western paintings, as a member of Western culture, are naturally buried deep in his heart. Killing Commendatore is a story of Western civilisation in the context of Japan's Asuka Period, full of violence and hidden meanings: Don Juan's assassination of the commendatore is an indictment of the young officer who forces his brother to commit the murder, and even an indictment of Japan's crimes of aggression and militarism, but also an indictment of the disappointment and abandonment of Western thought, and an indictment of the Nazi atrocities and the loss of human nature and humanity.

After "I" and the "Idea" of the commendatore appeares, Amada returnes to the studio in the form of his soul, and sits in front of the studio where he always sits and gazes at the painting "Killing Commendatore" for a long time, Amada gathers the remaining power of his life. "His eyes were filled with the will to stay in this world even for a moment, and the reason he did so was because the image of the idea was in front of him. " [4]The reason for doing so is that the image of the idea appears before his eyes, and, corresponding to it, the idea takes that form as far as the eye can see, and he realises that there is something that he must do here and now, even if he has to suffer severe physical pain. In his eyes, the idea is no longer in the form of the commendatore, but of the Nazi officer who should have been assassinated, or of the young lieutenant who has indirectly killed his brother-in short, of the man he wishes to kill. All in all, it is the killing of the source of violence, the destruction of evil and suffering, which he has wished for all his life but has not been able to achieve. After seeing "I" kill the "commendatore", he finally falls into a peaceful sleep and dies peacefully. He is finally reconciled with himself, who has failed to kill "evil", and the "ring" of Amada Gohan is finally closed.

4.2. "I"

After his wife asks for divorce, "I", a well-known portrait painter, is invited by his good friend Masahiko Amada to move into his father's residence and studio. It is then that I discover the painting "Killing Commendatore".

My role in the novel is that of an excavator and a spectator of buried history. The painting "Killing Commendatore" symbolises the unknown history and hidden violence, and "I" unveils the dusty curtain and opens up an unknown story. As a discoverer and an observer, I am the one who tries to overcome the violence and evil that lurks in me, and I am able to see "white Subaru", which proves that I am able to face up to the "evil" in my heart. As "I" keeps emphasising in the text, "I have to pull time to my side" [2]. From the beginning to the end, the "white Subaru man's" warning to "me" is always in "my" mind: "I know exactly what you've done where you are! I know exactly what you're doing!" [2] It is this spirit of self-monitoring or "prudence" that suppresses the violence that lurks within oneself. The "I" has a dual identity, one is to be able to face up to its own hidden evil and at the same time to fear its own hidden evil, which is an ordinary contradiction. At the same time, "I", as an "intruder", peeps into other people's lives and the truth of history, revealing the evil of history and the evil of others.

While travelling alone, "I" have a one-night stand with a woman, and after she keeps asking me to do so, I finally agree to her request: I keep beating her and strangling her with a white belt. But this memory lefts a very bad impression on "me", "something I don't want to remember, and if I could, I'd like to be put out of my misery forever" [2]. In the dream, however, I realise what I have been afraid of: the fear that I would actually strangle the woman at the last moment. In the same way, while travelling alone, I rape my wife in a dream, in which the ego is a nightmare as a "sexual doppelgänger", also with violent overtones, which by my own admission is also regarded as an act of violence. By my own admission, this is seen as an act of violence, and I am terrified that such an ego can become something inauspicious in the night. Although "I" have been trying to forget, or even to escape from the evil that lurks in my heart, the repressed violence can still be revealed to "I" through various means. "I am constantly trying to "turn time in my favour", to separate myself from the part of myself that is "evil", and even attempting to verbalise my violence (by putting the "White Subaru Man" on canvas), but the struggle is extremely difficult.

In the end, "I" is no longer obsessed with manifesting my evil at this stage, "Sooner or later I'll have to challenge that portrait again" [4], and then I will be more determined and more courageous in confronting another part of myself. "I have been fighting against my own "evil", not succeeding or failing, but accepting and letting go, facing up to my own weakness and latent violence. "I am finally reconciled with my darker self.

4.3. Mousai

After I divorced with my wife, I wander around for a month and a half. I received a commission to paint a portrait of my mysterious neighbour, " Mousai,". At this point in time, I think that painting portraits is already a commercial act with no value or meaning, but after meeting Mousai in person, I feel compelled to put him on paper. In my eyes, Mousai is a gentle and elegant man, with an insightful and well-spoken manner, and he even has a reflective and unique view on historical issues. His role is an expositor of history: the experiences of Amada's youth and the direct depiction of the Nanking Massacre come out of his mouth. In addition to this, there is a clear acknowledgement and reflection on the violence of history: "However, it is hard to deny the fact that countless citizens were killed as a result of the fighting, and the number of Chinese’s deaths is said to be 400,000, or 100,000, according to some. But what is the difference between 400,000 and 100,000?" [2] The phrase "what is the difference between 400,000 and 100,000?" runs throughout the revelations of violence, and is frequently referred to and reflected upon later in the text. As the repository of violent memories, Mousai appears to be a reflective, humanitarian, and impeccable elite figure in Japanese society. He is the vehicle through which the memories of violence are imported, and most of the memories of violence come out of his mouth.

However, in the words of the omniscient and omnipotent "commendatore", the colour-absent king "always has some kind of intention, and must be well laid out, and will not move unless he is well laid out" [4]. In addition to this, he even has "the possibility of attracting something extraordinary, something dangerous" [4]. In fact, it is easy to see the "intrigue" and "violence" that lurks in his heart. He has a strong desire to see and control Akikawa Marihime, who may be his daughter, and his attitude towards her mother, his dead lover, is almost pathological: he has a "bluebeard's secret room" in which he stores the clothes of his former lovers. The reason behind the high price of the portrait he commissioned from me was that he wanted to get close to Marumi Akikawa through the medium of me, and in order to get close to her, he even goes so far as to purchase the house opposite her house by force, and acquired military binoculars: inside his perfect image, there is a huge hidden agenda. Inside his perfect image, there is a huge desire for control and a well-planned and meticulous mind. In addition to this, there is also a violence in his heart: Shibuki asks to sit alone at the bottom of a cave in the middle of a forest of trees and asks "me" to let him out of there in an hour. But afterwards he asks "me" if he has ever thought of abandoning him at the bottom of the hole, and even confesses that "if it were me, I would be tempted by the idea of abandoning you forever in that hole, thinking that it would be the only chance I would ever have" [2]. This kind of "prank" has gone far beyond the scope of a joke, and has become a kind of malicious harm, an evil intention to kill someone. When Marie Akikawa is trapped in the wardrobe of the Lestat's house, the commendatore implies that Marie's mother is killed by Lestat's design. The fact that he has kept Mousai's mother's clothes and never shows them to the public is also a metaphor for the violent memories in the obscure area in the heart of Mousai: to hide them. Such violent memories are revealed when Mari-chan hides them in the wardrobe, and they become "dangerous things" that are both "colour-free" and not "colour-free" at the same time.

Mousai's obsession with Marihime's mother is the fact that she lefts him without saying goodbye, and this obsession has become a hatred and a desire to kill her. However, the obsession in Mousai's heart for Marihime's mother slowly dissipates in his contact with Akikawa Marihime: in "bluebeard's secret room", the embodiment of "evil" in his heart does not choose to open the wardrobe, which is a kind of "good" choice after a lot of struggles with the "evil" that he knows himself to be. In "bluebeard's secret room", the embodiment of the "evil" in his heart did not choose to open the wardrobe, knowing that he is "evil", but choosing "good" after much agonising, which protects Mari Akikawa. This slow opening of his heart and the gradual reconciliation of his ego are also manifested in the gradual change of his obsession with Marihime's mother: between Marihime's mother, who has already passed away, and Marihime's aunt, who exists in the present, he chooses to let go of the past and embrace the future.

5. Art paintings —metaphorical interpretation of "violence" and "secrecy"

As a portrait painter, the perception of artistic paintings of “I” is present throughout the text, and the importance of "I" inner thinking about what I am creating and a certain part of the "exchange" cannot be ignored. Bazant argues that in the history of Western painting, the trivialisation of art painting can be traced back to the 3rd century B.C.: "artistic reproduction was no longer regarded as an imitation of the visible world, but began to be regarded as an expression of an invisible essence" [5]. By this time art painting has become fundamentally different from commercial portraiture. Here the art painting is no longer a mere reference to a real thing, but a parody of a metaphysical idea. Although in Killing Commendatore, "I" always call my works commercial portraits, but its deeper connotation is obviously different from the general commercial portraits. "I have my own set of rules: I always interview the commissioner before making a work, and the reason for doing so is "to find in the conversation more elements in the subject that might resonate with me." While the formalist Fry argus that the portrait model is nothing more than scaffolding for the construction of "meaningful forms", Berenson is more radical, arguing that some portraits are in fact autobiographical projections of the writer's writer, and that portraits are in fact the "physicality" of the lines and colours on the canvas. "Portraits are in fact "ideas" with thematic potential that are manifested under the lines and colours on the canvas. It can be said that art creation for "I" is a spiritual exchange with a certain abstract concept that is hidden beneath the surface. Art creation during a series of encounters is a spiritual journey in which "I" am constantly approaching the "idea" and the "truth".

The most representative metaphor, and also the most arduous work that "I" created, is "White Subaru Man", which is a projection of psychological violence and real-life disasters. The first time "White Subaru Man" appearing is when "I" am travelling around and have a chance encounter with a one-night stand woman. At this time, the dangerous encounter with the one-night stand woman brings out the violence and evil in "I". "I have always been afraid of the white Subaru man, and "I know exactly what you've done wherever you have been" has been the refrain of every time he has appeared. Through my dreams, the white Subaru man becomes me, and at this point the white Subaru man and I are exchanging pieces of our souls: it is "the white Subaru man is now exchanging soul fragments with me: this is the product of my subconscious. As the embodiment of evil, he exists in the heart of "I", and the episode in which "I" transforms into the white Subaru man in the dream world directly reveals his nature. But he is not just the embodiment of evil as the other side of "I", but the universal voice of evil. "The "white Subaru man" appears at the side of a large fishing boat after the tsunami, and although the image only appears for a moment, in my eyes, that tall figure in the black leather jacket and black cap with the Yonex logo, I could only see him as a white Subaru. In this scene, he is metaphorically projecting not only the dark side of I" inner self, but the universal catastrophe and destruction that "I" see in him. In the mouth of commendatore, we learn the true metaphorical connotation of the "White Subaru Man": the "Evil Father", which is a combination of evil and ugliness. At the end of the novel, the painting of the "White Subaru Man" is consumed by fire, but as evil and violent, he cannot be completely destroyed. Violence, evil and ugliness always remain. But in the case of "I", for example, in the face of the "evil father", "I" can not be destroyed, but I can be suppressed. The persistence of the white Subaru man is a reflection of a social problem: the persistence of violent inheritance. But in the face of such disaster, destruction and ugliness, Haruki Murakami provides an answer to this question through the action of "I": when I saw the scene of the tsunami on the TV news, "I" covered the eyes of my young daughter, "Muro". In the face of the reality that evil cannot be eliminated, it is all the more important to provide proper guidance and protection to the next generation of young children.

The White Subaru Man is not a commissioned painting, but a work that "I" am mentally compelled to create. "The man had waited indefatigably for me to paint him, and it was not for anyone but myself that I painted his portrait; it had to be done." [2] In addition to this thing, which "I" feel so deeply that I must paint, there is another thing which gave "I" the impulse to paint "for no one else"—the hole in the forest of mixed trees.

According to "I", the creation of "The Hole in the Wood" is not a whim, but "something asked me to paint it, I couldn't wait" [4]. I am the first discoverer of the cave in the forest of mixed woods, and after that, the history and unknown secrets buried at the bottom of the cave, as well as the "commendatore" as the concept appear. The discovery and opening of the cave is the opportunity for a series of events to take place. The "hole" connects "me" and the colourless, enabling deeper communication between the two, the "hole" connects the metaphorical world and the real world, and the "hole" is also the place where the history of the buried secrets is buried. The "hole" also serves as the burial place of the buried objects in history. The "hole" is undoubtedly the key to a new life, and not only that, the "hole" also represents a beginning and a new life.

After the death of my sister, Xiao Lu, "I" have always had a kind of fear of the confined space, at the same time, because of thinking why the Personification of Death takes away my young sister and the and it has been an unresolved knot in the heart of "I". In the climax of the novel, "I" comes to the metaphorical world, overcomes the great fear of confined space, passes through the narrow passage like a wind tunnel and then returns to the hole in the forest of mixed trees. At this moment, "I" and "the hole" have completed the exchange of spiritual fragments. For me, the narrow passage is not only similar to the wind tunnel that I have visited with my sister, but also similar to the existence of my mother's womb, and after experiencing a "new birth" I return to the cave in the forest. After experiencing a "new birth", I return to the cave in the forest of mixed trees, completely unravelling the knot that my sister Xiaolu has brought to my heart, and obtaining a spiritual rebirth.

At the same time, what is closed and buried in the "cave" are unknown secrets and history, which can only come to light when the "cave" is opened. "Inside the cave are memories of history that have been forgotten, either consciously or unconsciously. The words of Marie Akikawa when she learns that "I" have dug up the "hole" confirm the crisis of society's historical memory: "It would be good to leave that place as it is, and that's what everyone is doing. That's what everyone does." [4] The hidden corner of historical memory is gradually forgotten, while the well-known crisis of memory is taken for granted. The act of digging a hole in a forest of mixed trees is also a sign that the buried and forgotten history will eventually come to light.

6. Conclusion

The meaning of "Killing Commendatore" is multi-faceted, including not only introspection on history, but also the healing of personal trauma, and the general revelation of the evils of the human heart. The message that Haruki Murakami wants to convey to the readers is not only the truth of history, but also the thinking about "ideas", the thinking about exposing traumas and expressing the psychology through art works, and the expression of the complexity and multi-faceted nature of human nature. Instead, it exposes the hidden history that has been buried and expresses the demand to face up to history. As the saying goes, "Even if the clouds are dark and thick, the back of the sky shines brightly".