Nakatonbetsu residents are not habitual litterbugs - say the Nakatonbetsu people. And they probably read Murakami's novels. Probably.
'The town assembly of Nakatonbetsu (1900 residents) have demanded an apology after a new story by Murakami appeared to suggest its residents habitually throw lit cigarettes from car windows.The offending passage appears in the new 24-page novella, entitled Drive My Car – Men Without Women, which was published in the December edition of the long established monthly magazine Bungeishunju' (...) The passage that has got him into so much trouble depicts a fictional chat between a widowed middle-aged actor and his 24-year-old driver, who is from Nakatonbetsu. When she tosses a lit cigarette out of the driver's window, the actor thinks to himself: "Probably this is something everyone in Nakatonbetsu commonly does." - wrote the Telegraph today.
Probably this affair won't really do harm to Murakami's fame. Probably.