In Murakami Haruki's novel Norwegian Wood, the main narrative follows a tragic love story coupled with the coming-of-age of the protagonist, Watanabe Toru. What this main focus tends to overshadow is the growing cultural divide present in Japanese society of the 1960's, which is represented in the novel by three distinct character types. Due to the serious nature of the story these character interctions and what they represent is often relegated to comic relief. The novel has been translated from Japanese twice, as well as truncated into the short story "Firefly," and while the same cultural tension is present in all three, it also receives the same treatment in each. By doing an inter-media translation - prose to graphic novel - the story is presented similarly to how it appears in the English versions, but with closer attention paid to the conflict between the three character types. This is done with a measure of subtlety by illustrating the characters in different ways in order to highlight their representative roles in the growing social divide. This project focuses on the scenes surrounding these specific characters, and by presenting them visually, the underlying issue is drawn to the surface.
