In his latest novel Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami recycles his lugubrious meditation on Japanese history and its war memory. He also re-employs the figure of "hole" to render the spiritual quest of contemporary Japanese who endeavor to battle the estrangement brought about by the consumer society. For all the striking similarities between this novel and his preceding works, this essay argues that we should not overlook his self-conscious reflection on the ontology of art(portraiture in particular) and theories on representation. Embedded in Killing Commendatore, those lengthy and discursive dialogues on the arts are not simply plot-making props, but rather Murakami’s up-todate contemplation on historical trauma and the threshold of artistic representation.