All hail, Yukuko Tanaka and your technique of face massage — seductive enough, when it comes to bestsellers, to relegate Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to third place . . . at least in Japan.

It’s worth remarking, again, on the astonishing appeal of Rowling’s no-longer-boyish wizard. How likely are the Brits to have a go at Muriel Barbery’s L’Élégance du hérisson (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)? Even if it were translated into English, the answer would seem to be “not very”. The list is packed with offerings from the Blessed Nigella, St Jamie and (from the lower celestial regions) Russell Brand.

It seems that the Germans are suckers for the icky mystifications of Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (so devoted are Americans to self-improvement that The New York Times has a bestseller chart for “Advice”). Otherwise, they like to get out and about: just behind Harry Potter in Deutschland is a top comedian’s account of his rugged jaunt to Santiago de Compostela.

The Japanese went for Byrne, too, when not reading Manga comics or The Homeless Junior High School Student, the comedian Hiroshi Tamura’s autobiography.

If, as looks likely, works of foreign literature are to be dropped from the A-level syllabus, will even bestsellers in German and French be accessible to British readers? I think not. But that, as they say, is another story.

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