Toru Okada, an unemployed Tokyo everyman, searches for his missing cat and then his missing wife Kumiko, who has fallen under the influence of her sinister brother Noboru Wataya, a rising political figure. Toru's quest takes him through encounters with psychic sisters, a teenage neighbor obsessed with death, and hallucinatory descents into a dry well — where he accesses a shadow world connecting his personal crisis to Japan's suppressed memories of wartime atrocities in Manchuria. He ultimately confronts a dark entity in a surreal hotel corridor, reclaims agency through violence, and destroys Noboru Wataya's power, though the cost of that destruction remains ambiguous.

Toru Okada has recently quit his job at a law firm and drifts through domestic life in a quiet Tokyo suburb. His cat, Noboru Wataya (named sarcastically after Kumiko's brother, whom Toru despises), has gone missing. A series of strange phone calls from an unknown woman disrupts Toru's routine. His w...