Haruki Murakami on donor motivations (and crowdfunding)

Because I live in Japan I feel duty-bound to read as much Ogawa, Murakami, and Ishiguro to help me understand this magical, infuriating, weird, and wonderful country.

So, after three false starts I finished Norwegian Wood (all it took was two flights and two young children plugged into two iPad films).

Norwegian Wood (named after the Beatle’s song) is a beautifully told, simple tale of love, loss and life set in Tokyo during the late sixties. It has a little bit of everything, even fundraising.

Murakami’s mastery of words extends to perfectly capturing the simplicity of the most common donor motivation.

Before I go on, a spoiler alert for the next paragraph. And, an apology to the Murakami purists out there — my reading of Japanese is enough to navigate local supermarkets, road signs and a small percentage of my mail here in Okinawa, but nowhere near enough to handle the original text (nor was I determined enough to locate the original translation by Alfred Birnbaum).

In the passage below, towards the end of the story, the main protagonist, Toru Watanabe, is mourning the death of his elusive love Naoko. He drops out of university and travels around Japan for a month. He is found hungry and exhausted on a beach by a kind young fisherman, who feeds…