A teaser trailer was released last week for a Japanese film called “Norwegian Wood,” based on the worldwide best-selling novel of the same name.

Written in 1987 by Haruki Murakami, the novel recounts the narrator’s university life in the 1960s, and his relationship with two women of opposite personalities.  The work was wildly popular in Japan and eventually gained acclaim elsewhere, making the film adaptation highly-anticipated among lovers of Japanese literature and cinema.

Considering the film’s niche appeal, the buzz surrounding it is relatively small, at least outside of Japan.  Most Japanese movies that find large commercial success in the West predominantly fall in the anime or horror genres.  Moody love stories don’t seem to find similar traction in countries like the United States.

In this decade, anime has constituted about 60 percent of Japanese film production.  Studio Ghibli guru Hayao Miyazaki found success in his homeland and abroad with the whimsical and lushly-animated “Spirited Away” (2001), “Howl’s Moving Castle” (2007) and “Ponyo” (2008).

J-horror films that have been remade in English include “The Ring” (1998), “One Missed Call” (2004) and “The Grudge” series (1998 to 2009).

Indeed, the Japanese have traditionally launched cinema into wildly imaginative and unexplored territories through animation, complex plots and surrealism. Leonardo DiCarpio said last week that he expects “Inception” to perform well in Japan, as it contains the kind of surreal environment that the Japanese embrace.

Click here for more screenshots of “Norwegian Wood.”

According to the producers, the film will be directed by French-Vietnamese Tran Anh Hung, 46, and feature Japanese actors. Production was scheduled to begin in February 2009, and the film will be released in 2010. Murakami has long declined offers to make the story into a film.