From Tokyo streets to the highest levels of government, Japan recently cheered the Oscar win of Drive My Car amid hopes it will raise the profile of Haruki Murakami, the perennial Nobel prize hopeful who penned the story on which the film was based.
The three-hour drama, the story of a widowed theatre actor grappling with his past, was directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and based on a short story by Murakami, the international bestselling author whose name has arisen annually for more than a decade as a potential Nobel Literature Prize winner.