One of the year's biggest selling books is Hiroshi Tamura's "Homeless Junior High School Student," a memoir focusing on the 28-year-old comedian's adolescence.
When Tamura was 11 his mother died and several years later his father, overburdened by the responsibilities of raising three children alone, disappeared. Tamura lived in a park for a while and was eventually taken in by neighbors.
On the book's jacket is an endorsement from Liberal Democratic Party honcho Taro Aso, who says it relates "something we as Japanese should never forget."