There was an interesting trend among the best picture nominees at the 85^th Academy Awards in Los Angeles: The Academy chose a number of politically hard-hitting films. To varying degrees, Argo, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained and Les Miserables all fit this bill.

These films tell tales of hunting Osama bin Laden (Zero Dark Thirty), the life and times of the emancipator of American slaves (Lincoln), a freed slave on a mission to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner (Django Unchained), and a film version of the musical based on Victor Hugo’s classic 19^th century novel of social injustice.

To be sure, softer nominees were also in the running: Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook and The Life of Pi. But there a strong political flavor was present in the Academy’s choices this year.

Prior to the unfurling of the red carpet, heated predictions put Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln biopic, in which Daniel Day-Lewis plays the 16^th American president; and Argo, produced by George Clooney and directed by Ben Affleck; in a tight race for best picture. In the end, Argo won.

In his acceptance speech, Afleck said, “I want to acknowledge Steven Spielberg, who I think is a genius. I want to thank Canada. I want to thank our friends in Iran living under terrible circumstances right now.” Reportedly, Affleck’s interest in the story behind Argo has roots in his time as a Middle Eastern Studies major at Occidental University in Los Angeles.

Argo, which took home a total of three prizes, recounts the story of a rogue, parachuting CIA agent who rescued six fugitive American diplomatic personnel hiding in the Canadian embassy in Tehran in 1980 during the Iranian revolution.

While Argo director Ben Affleck may have been snubbed for a best director nomination, Ang Lee was not. The Taiwan-born director upset many expectations that Spielberg would win the prize, winning the statue for the second time with his work on The Life of Pie. Lee first won best director for Brokeback Mountain in 2006, six years after he first came to fame with the martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won best foreign language film.

Providing a fantastical balance to the decidedly political flavor of Argo, The Life of Pi is a film adaptation of Yann Martel’s bestselling novel of the same name, which recounts a metaphor-rich tale of a boy lost at sea (played by Indian actor Suraj Sharma), who winds up stranded on a small boat with a Bengal tiger.

Called “unfilmable” at one point, Lee managed to turn the film – with a budget of more than U.S. $125 million – into an international sensation that has raked in almost U.S. $600 million worldwide.

“Thank you, movie God,” Lee said in his acceptance speech. “I really need to share this with all 3,000 people who worked with me on Life of Pi and sharing this incredible journey with me…Suraj [Sharma], you're a miracle, carrying the movie. Everyone who worked on this, you are the golden statue in my heart.”

He added, “I couldn't have made this film without Taiwan."

To be sure, others won big: Daniel Day-Lewis (best actor, Lincoln), Jennifer Lawrence (best leading actress, Silver Linings Playbook), Christoph Waltz (best supporting actor, Django Unchained), Anne Hathaway (best supporting actress, Les Miserables) and Quentin Tarrantino (best screenplay, Django Unchained), among others.

But by the end of the show, Argo (with three awards) and The Life of Pi (with the most of any picture at four) clearly carried the night.

Many Japanese players are active these days in the top football leagues of Europe. Shinji Kagawa at Manchester United and Keisuke Honda at CSKA Moscow are some of the most highly rated players in the world right now.

Japan is a rapidly rising football power and its national team is the current champion of the AFC Asian Cup. The country is improving all the time and is already preparing to host the 2019 World Cup.

The sport is slowly taking off around the continent, with South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Kazakhstan, currently ranked as the best of the rest. These teams have a long way to go to match Japan, though. Never mind the traditional big boys.

Things are slowly changing even in the rugby world, traditionally dominated by the United Kingdom, France and southern hemisphere powers South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Other powers – not only Asian – are slowly emerging. Italy has inched its way into the Six Nations Championship, the annual round of games in the Northern Hemisphere. Argentina has done the same in the south to make the Tri-Nations and the Four Nations rugby tournaments.

And then there is Japan. The country has the best rugby team in Asia, but that does not mean quite as much – not yet at least. But there are already visible signs of its growing prowess in the sport.

Fumiaki Tanaka of Kyot, for one, now plays for the Highlanders from Dunedin on New Zealand’s South Island. The club competes in the Tri-Nations club tournament called Super Rugby, which comprises 15 professional teams from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.

“I cried because it was my ultimate goal as a rugby player,” the 28-year-old told the New York Times. “I was very honored. I feel a bit of pressure and responsibility, because I’m the first rugby player and if I don’t play well, then not many Japanese players could be allowed to come to New Zealand again.”

He added, “There are Japanese players good enough to play Super Rugby, but I have to prove that I can play as well as New Zealand players.”

It is not only on the pitch that Japanese players can stand out. Commercially and promotionally, they can be a big deal.

Japanese television crews are already in New Zealand following the pioneer and documenting his new adventure.

This kind of interest is familiar to big clubs in Europe. For seven years, Park Ji-sung played for Manchester United and helped to elevate the club to major brand status in his native South Korea.

Of Tanaka’s success with The Highlanders, the club’s marketing manager Doug McSweeney told the Southland Times, "It's massive. It's big. There have been quite a few requests. We had the New York Times talking with him last week for their global online edition. It's out there."

He added, "Adidas might sell a few more jerseys with Tanaka on the back this season.”

The passing of Donald Richie – writer, painter, filmmaker and Tokyo flaneur – marks the end of an era. Richie, who died Tuesday in Tokyo, was far and away the West’s foremost interpreter of things Japanese. American author Tom Wolfe called him “the Lafcadio Hearn of our time”.

Born April 17, 1924, in the small Midwestern town of Lima, Ohio, Richie first arrived in Japan in 1947, as a 22-year old typist with the Allied Occupation forces. His eyes were soon opened to the country that he would choose to call home for most of his life.

“If I had stayed in Lima, Ohio, I think my life would’ve been endless, like two thousand years,” Richie told Kyoto Journal in 1999, in a superb interview still online here. “But here, everything is so interesting, every day has something new you can do, people you can meet. Everyday you wake up and think ‘What am I going to learn today?’ And, of course, that’s what kept me here, and what made things go so fast."

Aside from a stint at Columbia University, where he graduated in 1953, and a period working as film curator for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Richie spent roughly half a century in Tokyo, documenting and delving deeply into Japanese art, society and culture.

When he first arrived in Japan, the country was in ruins and still seen as the enemy. But Richie found himself driven to understand and connect with Japanese on an individual, human level.

“Donald was a great humanist. Though he fraternized with the rich and famous, he wrote about everyman, the invisible. He elevated the ordinary to the extraordinary in this way,” Leza Lowitz, a Tokyo-based author, editor and personal friend of Richie, told The Diplomat. “For him, writing was a way of life. It was built into the way he lived: Observing, questioning, learning. He was always open to seeing. And in seeing, he was able to transform an ordinary experience into something extraordinary and sometimes transcendent.”

As an observer and writer, “prolific” is an understatement for Richie’s output. Throughout the course of his long life he produced some 40 books, on themes ranging from travelogues and historical novels to collections of short fiction and his renowned tomes on Japanese film scholarship. Volumes on flower arranging, the art of the Japanese tattoo, aesthetics, sympathetically written portraits of individuals and a riveting memoir also fill his bibliography.

Yet even this fails to capture the true extent of Richie’s contributions as a writer. In the introduction to The Inland Sea, his classic autobiographical travelogue of a journey through Japan’s Seto Naikai (Inland Sea) – the shallow, picturesque sea bounded by Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu – author Pico Iyer writes: “It is, in fact, an injustice to call Richie a writer on Japan; really, he is a writer on artifice and time and death, on being human. And most of all he’s a writer on the particularly modern art of learning how to be a foreigner.”

In the introduction, Iyer goes on to place Richie in the company of literary figures such as Graham Greene, Jan Morris, Paul Bowles and Somerset Maugham. He continues: “The only problem with Richie’s writing, in fact, is that it’s never been easy enough to find around the world, in part because people, knowing him to be a writer in Japan, assume that he’s a writer on Japan. And as a pure, reflective writer of a kind that seems all but antique, he has done nothing to sell himself to the world or to dress himself up with gestures or high concepts.”

This humility and approachableness are very evident in his writing. Even readers who never met him are afforded an intimate glimpse in much of his writing of Richie as a human being.

Picking up on this, filmmakers Lucille Carra and Brian Cotnoir produced a film version of The Inland Sea in 1992, which is narrated by Richie. The movie works on two levels. On one, it explores the geographical body of water and the traditional aspects of Japan disappearing around it. But more deeply, it dives into the metaphorical “Inland Sea” within the author himself.

Ultimately, Richie is best known for his association with film. Indeed, he almost single-handedly introduced the West to Japanese film, starting with his landmark 1959 study The Japanese Film: Art and Industry, co-authored with Joseph L. Anderson.

In The Japan Journals: 1947-2004, edited over the course of a decade by Lowitz, Richie tells the story of a trip to a film studio in the late-1940s when he met a director and “someone I guessed was a star” in “a loose Hawaii-shirt”. The duo turned out to be legendary director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune. In similar fashion, Richie had a knack for meeting people in high places and telling us about them.

Richie later did the subtitles for three Kurosawa films and penned books on the director. He also became a great lover of Yasujiro Ozu’s films and introduced him to the West in another lauded study.

“His many publications on Japanese film were the touchstone from which all of us English-language critics on the subject sprang,” Rob Schwartz, Tokyo Bureau Chief of Billboard Magazine and reporter for The Hollywood Reporter, told The Diplomat. “As a friend he had a loving human warmth and deep generosity of spirit that is very rare in this world. This deep humanism informed his analysis and writing on film.”

Ultimately, it was Richie’s humanism, remarked upon by all who knew him, that defines his life and work, and helps explain the outpouring of tributes since his death.

“I loved his curiosity, compassion, sensuality and edgy wit…. He was gracious and generous.… I was in awe of his talents. Once, when he called a suggestion ‘brilliant’, I was over the moon,” recalled Stewart Wachs, a former associate editor of Kyoto Journal who edited Richie’s work over the years. “But with time I also grew humorously puzzled by his mangled spelling, and sure enough when I asked him about it he just laughed and said he trusted his editors to fix that and other minor blemishes while he rode the alpha waves that enabled him to be prolifically creative.”

Wachs continued, “Being Donald, he had actually put this too humbly, for his submission drafts were routinely extraordinary. He revised them extensively, making them a formidable challenge for any editor to improve.”

What turned out to be one of Richie’s most interesting works were his own journals, edited by Lowitz and published by Stone Bridge Press as The Japan Journals: 1947-2006.

Stone Bridge Press publisher Peter Goodman told The Diplomat he “was totally floored by what was there (in the Journals). I guess I had been expecting a linear and comprehensive account, but it was more like dipping in and out of a stewpot. There are time gaps and threads never followed to the end, but the palpable sense of time passing, a man aging, and an old postwar world fading away is astonishing. His life seemed so full of meetings, conversations, and travels, punctuated now and then by a celebrity or by an ordinary but engaging person.”

The Journals are interspersed with accounts of Richie’s encounters with some of Japan’s biggest movers and shakers, as well as artists and dignitaries visiting from abroad. Yukio Mishima, Toru Takemitsu, Truman Capote and Somerset Maugham make appearances, among many others.

Goodman added, “While he (Donald) indicated to me that they were expurgated, they are certainly not tame and reveal a penchant for adventure and exploration that some readers have found a bit shocking. So while I was expecting a more mannered ‘overview’, we got -- thank goodness -- a very full-blooded portrait of a man and the world he inhabited, and not entirely as the observer he became most famous for being.”

Lowitz said Richie was equally generous as a mentor. “Donald was an incredible inspiration to young writers such as myself. He was diligent and committed to writing – he did it every day, no matter what.”

She called him “a master of form”, explaining that “his work in the Japanese cinema informed his understanding of narrative. The films of Ozu, among his favorites, were exemplary because in a good film, the end is built into the beginning. He said ‘To become aware of form is a liberating experience’.”

This need for structure and form in order to achieve freedom was a recurring theme for Richie. It comes up time and again in his writing and recorded conversations and, indeed, was part of the very reason he chose to make his home in Japan, where he could never fully belong.

In 1999, he told Kyoto Journal, “I think you can only get freedom within bounds. I don’t know who said that — Sartre? . . . But I believe it. You set your own boundaries and then within those you find freedom.”

Last week, two rival Indonesian football associations signed an agreement that could allow the nation to avert suspension from international competition. Considering Indonesia’s history with the sport, however, fans can be forgiven for being skeptical.

For years, Indonesia has made international football headlines for events often not related to action on the pitch — perhaps not surprising when the president of the national association is sentenced to prison on charges of corruption.

Years of strife and struggle on the scandalous Indonesian pitch led to the creation of a rival national association and breakaway league.

The Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI) is the official body that runs football in the country, but for the past few years the breakaway Indonesian Soccer Rescue Committee (KPSI) has also existed.

Things hit a tragic low in December when Diego Mendieta died alone in hospital of complications from typhoid fever and liver disease, after not being able to afford his medical bills due to the non-payment of his salary from his club.

Later the same month, French player Moukwelle Ebanga Sylvain fell seriously ill with typhus, but could not afford treatment after not being paid for nine months by Indonesian Premier League club Persewangi Banywang.

Brendan Schwab, Division Asia/Oceania chairman of world players’ union FIFPro, slammed the club and warned the country’s football authorities to get their act together.

“It is unbelievable that a few weeks after the passing of Diego Mendieta, we are informed about another player in Indonesia seriously suffering from an illness and waiting in vain for the payment of his salary,” Schwab said. “Fortunately, Moukwelle has recovered from his sickness. But it is another warning sign that drastic reforms are needed in Indonesia.”

As FIFA takes a dim view of two national associations, many expected the football authority to suspend the country from international football last December.

“I think it was quite a Christmas or end of year gift to Indonesia that they haven’t been suspended,” FIF president Sepp Blatter said in December. FIFA set a March 20 deadline for the dispute to be settled.

Apparently, things were serious enough that FIFA told the Indonesian government to help the football bodies find a solution to the problem.

After meeting Indonesian Youth and Sports Minister Roy Suryo, Djohar Arifin Husin, chief of the FIFA-sanctioned PSSI, and his rebel counterpart La Nyalla Mataliti of KPSI, agreed last week to attempt a merger.

“Hopefully, everything will go well and the KPSI will merge into PSSI,” Suryo said.

“The letter from FIFA is not only directed to me, but also to the national football organization, so the leakage of the letter is true,” Suryo told an investor.

However, fans won’t hold their breath after seeing it all before. Last July, the two parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Kuala Lumpur. Nothing came of it.

As a huge nation with an equally big love for the beautiful game, Indonesia deserves better.

The archetypal tale of the street kid who makes good is being lived by 14-year-old Afghan map seller Fawad Mohammadi. On Tuesday, he left the gritty streets of Kabul, boarded an airplane for the first time and landed 18 hours later (plus layovers) on another planet: Los Angeles.

Mohammadi is in Hollywood to attend the Academy Awards this Sunday for his role in the movie Buzkashi Boys, which is nominated for Best Live Action Short Film. He wept with joy when he heard the news.

“I was so happy,“ he told the Los Angeles Times. This NBC video of the moment has since gone viral.

The film’s American director Sam French discovered Mohammadi peddling gum and maps on Kabul’s famed “Chicken Street”, which was once part of the Hippy Trail. The youngest of seven children whose father died several years ago, Mohammadi was working on the popular tourist street to support his family.

A steady supply of tourists seeking Afghan carpets, jewelry and crafts along the well-known merchant’s street gave the young vendor ample opportunity to hone his English skills, in preparation for the fateful encounter with French, who directed and shot the film on location in Afghanistan.

The movie tells the story of two best friends – a street urchin and a blacksmith’s son who spends his nights sharpening axe heads at his father’s shop – growing up in Kabul.

The boys dream of one day competing as a chapandaz, the name given to a competitor in Afghanistan’s remarkable national sport of Buzkashi.

There is polo and then there is Buzkashi, which takes the essence of the former – riding on horseback, fiercely moving an object toward a goal – but replaces polo’s ball with … a decapitated, disemboweled goat carcass. Winners in this primal contest are awarded with money, land plots, even AK-47s. An authentic video of this testosterone-driven Central Asian pastime in action can be seen here.

Defying expectations, Mohammadi plays the blacksmith’s son, while his costar 15-year-old Jawanmard Paiz plays the street kid. Paiz has been acting since age five, has attended the Cannes Film Festival and is the son of a prominent Afghan actor. Both boys were 12 at the time of filming. The trailer can be seen here.

Of the choice to cast Mohammadi instead of Paiz in the role of the urchin, director French told the Los Angeles Times, “He just has the biggest heart of anyone I know, and he has these huge green eyes. He was the character we had written.”

Paiz had nothing but praise for his costar’s breakthrough performance. “I have to say that Fawad’s performance was great, as it was his first experience working in a movie,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

After taking a battering by the Taliban, Afghanistan’s once vibrant film scene is slowly finding its feet again under the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

“There were many logistical challenges,” French said. “We spent over a year in pre-production to ensure we had the support of the Afghan government and police protection in all the locations we filmed.”

Some of the earnings from the film, which cost U.S. $200,000 to finish, will go toward Mohammadi’s education and to his family. After the film, he said that he plans to hit the books and has no delusions of grandeur.

In Los Angeles, French explained that the stars will stay with an Afghan family to ease the culture shock a bit. But this hasn’t phased Mohammadi’s enthusiasm to explore during his brief stay in Los Angeles.

“I want to see a lot of things there… And I want to see some actors,” he told NBC.

It looks like he came to the right place.

In recent days, Thailand’s transgender community has surfaced in media reports, covering topics ranging from an offensive IKEA advertisement to a political campaign aimed at the untapped “kathoey” (male-to-female) voting bloc.

Pongsapat Pongcharoen, a U.S.-educated police general from the Pheu Thai Party, launched this sleek, upbeat campaign video on YouTube to appeal to the capital’s ‘third sex’ in his campaign to become Bangkok’s next governor. The video features a cheery mosaic of Bangkok’s demographics, including a number of kathoeys. As the first political campaign video to openly court the transgender vote, it may be a prescient move by Pongcharoen who is ahead in the latest poll.

"Our modern world increasingly accepts varied genders,” the Global Post quotes Pongcharoen as saying in the video message. “Bangkok must be a city that understands sexual differences, not just accepting different lifestyles ... it must be a friend to every difference."

While an exact number is hard to pin down, Thailand’s transgender community is estimated to range from 10,000 to 100,000. This represents a major untapped voting bloc and social force if it can be successfully engaged.

“Not every transgender person is concerned with political issues, simply because gender-identity politics remain separate from mainstream political issues,” Thai transgender activist Prempreeda Pramoj Na Ayutthaya told The Diplomat. “I would vote for candidates who set concrete policies that benefit the transgender community. … and support gender equality.”

She added that politicians who address the need to create social spaces with transgender people in mind, such as public rest rooms, would also be likely to attract the community’s vote. Legal recognition of transgender identity and the ability to change names on ID cards are other issues that concern transgender people.

“Some politicians attended meetings held by community-based organizations for LGBT,” Pramoj Na Ayutthaya added. “Many politicians go to the market and cook with sellers to present a good image before elections. But I have never seen one visit a cabaret to ask trans-women about their concerns.”

Not even Nok Yollada, Thailand's first transgender office holder, has gone out of her way to appeal to transgender voters. "I don’t even focus on gender in my campaign. I barely bring it up," she told the Global Post.

Frank political discourse related to transgender issues may still be in its infancy, but their treatment has long been a hot topic in Thailand. Thailand’s first sex change operation was performed in 1972. Today more of these procedures take place in Thailand than any other country in the world.

Transgendered singers, television personalities and movie stars have become a fixture of Thai pop culture. Pattaya even hosts an annual transgender beauty pageant, Miss Tiffany’s Universe, beamed out to television sets nationwide.

Indeed, the “Land of Smiles” is widely viewed as a bastion of Buddhist tolerance and social grace. To casual Western observers, an attitude of “mai pen rai” (“no worries”) seems to hold Thai society together.

At first glance, it seems that Thailand’s transgender people have it made. But the reality is more complex. Thai society and law are not as accommodating to its transgendered community as the popular image suggests.

Although Thai parents of transgender children are often very supportive, society can often be cruel. According to a poll by Ramkhamhaeng University Public Opinion Center, 70 percent of respondents disapprove of allowing gay marriage or granting transgender people to change their gender on their ID cards and passports.

This widespread attitude often manifests in the recent IKEA ad, which the company has since apologized for, and this ad for the Toctick clinic.

Responding to IKEA’s apology, Pramoj Na Ayutthaya said, “This is only one action. … Together with the global trans community, Thai transgendered people still need to work hard for equality.”

The Japanese government announced that it will give the People’s Honor Award to sumo champ Taiho, who died in January at the age of 72.

He is only the second sumo wrestler to receive the People’s Honor Award from the Japanese government and that shows just how highly Taiho was thought of.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said that Taiho, whose real name was Koki Naya, was a “national hero loved by lots of people, giving society hopes, dreams and courage.”

The only other wrestler, out of a total of 21 recipients of the prize, was former yokozuna (sumo’s highest rank) Chiyonofuji Mitsugu who was honored in 1989.

With a stellar record, Taiho was regarded as a pure sumo wrestler who believed in and relished the sumo way of life, centered on humility and hard work.

Chiyonofuji said after Taiho’s death that he was a special competitor.

“He embodied alone sumo history,” Chiyonofuji said. Taiho’s achievements were special, not least because he won a record 32 tournaments in his career.

Taiho was born in 1940 on the Russian island of Sakhalin, which was then part of the Japanese empire, to a Japanese mother and a Ukrainian father.

When the Russians retook the island in 1945, the boy and his mother were repatriated to Hokkaido while his anti-communist father disappeared. When Taiho later embarked on a tour of the Soviet Union, he reportedly tried to find information about his father but was unsuccessful.

He started wrestling in 1956 before drawing the curtains on a stellar career in 1971.

His achievements during that time were and, still are, legendary for a man who was by no means the biggest in sumo in terms of physique. What he lacked in bulk, at a relatively trim 300 pounds, he made up for in ability.

When he reached the rank of yokozuna, he was then the youngest ever to do so, at just over 21 years old.

He had an amazing 45-match winning streak in the 1960s. This sequence ended in a defeat that based on a controversial decision by judges, which led to the introduction of video replays in the sport.

After retiring from active wrestling, he remained tied to the sport, founding his own stable.

In an era when sumo’s popularity is on the wane, Taiho will be will be remembered by millions of fans as the classic representative of the sport.

Haruki Murakami fans, take heart. The next novel by the celebrated Japanese author is coming in April, according to an announcement released by publisher Bungeishunju on Saturday.

The Diplomat contacted the publisher, who confirmed the book deal and April release for the Japanese version, but refused to divulge any other details.

It’s been three years since Murakami’s last quirky tome, the 1,000-page 1Q84 (published by Shinchosha), took the literary world by storm. A play on George Orwell’s 1984 – with “kyu” being the Japanese pronunciation for the word “nine” – 1Q84 tells the stories of a female assassin Aomame and a man named Tengo who is ghost-writing a novel within the novel titled Air Chrysalis for a literary contest.

A religious cult, a girl with powers of telekinesis, a mysterious dowager and much more come into play in this three-part story set against the backdrop of a fictionalized Tokyo circa 1984. On the day of its release, Japan’s largest bookstore Kinokuniya sold more than one copy per minute, according to the BBC. Keep in mind, this isn’t Harry Potter.

For those who are be new to Murakami – though it would be hard to evade his reach – a playful, surreal quality infuses his fictional universe, which is populated by talking cats, psychic prostitutes and dancing dwarves in alternate universes and subterranean worlds.

Almost everyone who likes Murakami says the same thing: They get lost in the worlds of his novels, yet somehow come through feeling illuminated in some vague way. It’s an interesting phenomenon.

What gives the classic Murakami touch to these fantastic elements, though, is the way they are interwoven into “everyday life”. Cool-headed, bemused protagonists navigate the confusing boundary between waking life and dream, thrown into predicaments that are simple on the surface, but suggest layers of depth.

In his 20s, Murakami operated a jazz bar with his wife called Peter Cat in suburban Tokyo. Memories of these years seem to drift effortlessly into much of his fiction, which is decidedly Western in its pop cultural references and overall style.

Since debuting with Hear the Wind Sing in 1979, Murakami has gone on to write twelve novels and several collections of short stories, which have been translated into more than 40 languages. But he didn’t find his stride until he penned Norwegian Wood in 1987, which was later turned into a film by director Tran Anh Hung.

Murakami began to find an international audience from the late 1990s, when translators Alfred Birnbaum, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel began to dip into his growing body of work, which includes The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. In anticipation of his forthcoming novel, a look back at the response to 1Q84 gives a taste of things to come.

“Murakami is the only living writer who can sell a million copies in a month and still be in the running for the Nobel Prize,” Douglas Haddow wrote in a laudatory article titled “IQ84 is Proof that Literature Matters”, published in the Guardian in October 2011.

Speculating on Murakami’s chances for the prize has become a collective pastime when Nobel season rolls around each autumn.

But not all were so enamored with his last book. In The Atlantic, Allen Barra wrote, “What’s so disappointing about 1Q84 is that while it's far more complicated than Murakami's previous books, it doesn't extend or deepen ideas and themes from them, and even seems like a pale reflection of his earlier work.”

Love or hate Murakami’s peculiar brand of fiction, there is no doubt that a great deal of fanfare and hype will surround the next release from the literary star.

The Daily Telegraph reported Friday that Disney executives were scouting spots along Australia’s Gold Coast and in New South Wales and Victoria for a remake of the 1954 sci-fi adventure picture 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Disney has waffled on itscommitment to the film for about three years, but is approaching a potential deal.

Rumors swirled that Brad Pitt would play the part of fabled harpooner Ned Land in the remake of the 1954 sci-fi flick starring Kirk Douglas and based on the 1870 science fiction classic written by French novelist Jules Verne. Across the media headlines declared Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their six children could be heading to Australia.

The “Brangelina” rumors proved unfounded, but the real story is the movie itself. If the Australian government can successfully woo American director David Fincher, it would be the largest Australian film production to date. Not a moment too soon: If the film comes through it will be the only project of its size on the books for Australia in 2013.

Fincher, whose film credits include Fight Club, Panic Room and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Disney executives and Australian Minister of the Arts Simon Crean, met February 15 to talk finances.

The main sticking point is the strength of the Australian dollar, which drives up production costs, which the Australian government offsets through major incentives. The Australian dollar was at just 68 U.S. cents when the latest Matrix film was made in Sydney.

Since then, the Aussie has appreciated dramatically, to the point where it is beyond parity with the U.S. dollar. To offset this, the Australian government offers a location incentive off the bat in the form of a tax rebate of 16.5 percent.

To lure The Wolverine, starring Aussie Hugh Jackman, this rebate was increased to 30 percent, for a payment of AU$12 million. The Australian government is angling a similar deal to net 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo. Deadline reported an incentive of $12.2 million, while The Hollywood Reporter put the figure higher at $19.2 million.

“We’ve made our offer but the deal is not yet done,” Crean told Fairfax Media, according to The Age. “It’s contingent on similar commitments that New South Whales made to Wolverine, and likewise in Queensland.”

Disney executives are probably reluctant to take the plunge for good reasons, following decidedly weak performances in 2012 on The Avengers and John Carter.

But for Australia, the kicker is job creation. Shooting of The Wolverine, to be released this July, created 2,000 jobs, attracted $80 million in local investment and contracted 850 local companies to the Sydney-based project. The 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo venture is expected to be an even larger boon for investors and film industry professionals.

If the project goes forward in Australia, scouts have zeroed in on Village Roadshow Studios in Queensland and Fox Studios in Sydney. And if not, thousands of studio pros – from camera operators and audio engineers to lighting specialists and special effects whizzes – might have little choice but to pack up their equipment and move to friendlier filmmaking climes abroad.

And this doesn’t necessarily mean Hollywood. Romania, the Czech republic and Hungary have become major film centers in recent years, with a growing base of skilled film professionals working for lower costs. London, Berlin and Canadian cities have also gained ground as filmmaking centers.

If Australia can snag this potential blockbuster project, shooting would be expected to begin in the next few months.

Fincher plans to shoot in 3D, and has estimated that 70 percent of the finished product will be CG.

“Wolverine employed 2,000 people and the director, James Mangold, said it was the best crew he’s ever worked with,” Crean told Fairfax Media. “This is the first one Disney have done with us – and if they get the same view as James, they’ll want to be looking here in the future.”

This deal is crucial for Australia’s film business. By inking a deal with Disney, the country could plug its film industry brain drain – at least for a while.

It would be a testament to the power of sport if Iran, the United States and Russia were to unite to fight the recent decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to drop wrestling from the 2020 Olympic Games.

Technically, wrestling has not yet been completely dropped, but it must compete against seven hopeful sports for one open slot in the 2020 games. Competing sports include baseball/softball, the martial arts karate and wushu, roller sports, sport climbing, squash and wakeboarding.

Some sports come and go at the Olympics. Baseball and softball said goodbye after the 2008 Beijing Games and in 2016, golf and rugby are on the list. But few expected that such a venerable event would be axed.

"In the view of the executive board, this was the best program for the Olympic Games in 2020,” said IOC spokesman Mark Adams. “It's not a case of what's wrong with wrestling; it is what's right with the 25 core sports."

Wrestling was at the core of the ancient Olympics, prompting many to ask why the sport has been dropped, while events such as synchronized swimming and dressage have made the cut. Indeed, the decision has been criticized far and wide.

IOC chairman Jacques Rogge claimed that the body expected bad press. He reminded critics that it was not yet official and that the decision could still be reversed.

"We agreed we would meet at the first opportunity to have discussions," Rogge said at a press conference. "I should say FILA [International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles] reacted well to this disheartening news for them. They vowed to adapt the sport and vowed to fight to be eventually included in the 2020 slot."

The decision cost Switzerland's Raphael Martinetti his job as head of Fila, the sport’s world governing body. He was removed by a vote of no confidence at an executive committee meeting in Thailand and resigned after serving in the role since 2002.

The choice to drop wresting is an especially cruel blow to Iran, which has historically dominated in the sport. Iran won six medals in wrestling in the 2012 London games, three of which were gold. The country’s only other gold came in weightlifting.

Mohammad Aliabadi, president of Iran's National Olympic Committee, said: "Wrestling is the oldest and most famous sport in the world and I am shocked and regretful to hear that an unwise and unconsidered decision has been made to omit the oldest international sport in the world."

“Do we destroy our historical sites which are symbols of humanity? No. Then, why should we destroy wrestling?” Iranian gold medalist Ali Reza Dabir told the Associated Press.

Despite a diplomatic freeze that has lasted more than 30 years, Iran and the U.S. are ready to team up and wrangle to keep the sport in the Olympics. 

"I'm headed to Iran on Monday, and this is a main topic of my conversation with the leadership of the Iranian wrestling federation," said Rich Bender, executive director of USA Wrestling.

"The sports world is rallying around our sport right now. … We're just an incredibly diverse sport regardless of race, color, size. It's a really inclusive sport and I think one of the most important on the program."