The Norwegian Wood author can generally rely on a besotted readership. But now he's joined a long tradition of authors' site-specific smears
Running into trouble … Haruki Murakami, jogging. Photograph: Patrick Fraser
Haruki Murakami, one of the world's most respected and popular writers, is well-used to extreme reactions when he releases new work. Last year in Japan, when Colourless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage went on sale with an initial print run of 500,000 (one copy for every 250 people in his native country), thousands of people queued overnight, showing a dedication that puts even iPhone mania in the shade. His books sell in the millions. Everything from the cover art, to the blurb, to (especially) the title is dissected in great detail. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone wonders aloud why he hasn't yet been given the Nobel prize. Or, everyone except the judges of the bad sex award and the New York Times's Janet Maslin. So by this stage the 65-year-old novelist probably thought he'd seen it all – until the townsfolk of Nakatonbetsu in Japan demanded that he apologise for insulting their honour.
The offence, it seems, is that the novelist appeared to suggest Nakatonbetsu's residents throw cigarettes from car windows. This was a mistake becase, as Shuichi Takai, head of the local assembly's secretariat, told AFP, nothing could be further from the truth: "In early spring, the town people gather of their own will in a clean-up operation to collect litter on roads. We also work hard to prevent wildfires as 90% of our town is covered with mountain forests. It is never a town where people litter with cigarettes every day. We want to know why the name of a real town had to be used like that."
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The offence, it seems, is that the novelist appeared to suggest Nakatonbetsu's residents throw cigarettes from car windows. This was a mistake becase, as Shuichi Takai, head of the local assembly's secretariat, told AFP, nothing could be further from the truth: "In early spring, the town people gather of their own will in a clean-up operation to collect litter on roads. We also work hard to prevent wildfires as 90% of our town is covered with mountain forests. It is never a town where people litter with cigarettes every day. We want to know why the name of a real town had to be used like that."
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