Manga are the engine of Japan's new multibillion dollar export success, its pop-culture sofuto sangyo -- software industry -- which includes anime, video games, and music. Not surprisingly, perhaps, more and more foreigners are also using manga to learn Japanese.

The most popular are sutori (story) manga, a postwar innovation on an art form imported from the United States. Highly visual, novelistic and often stretching thousands of pages, they are first serialized in omnibus manga zasshi (magazines) and then compiled into a series of tankobon (books).

Why are manga being used to learn Japanese? First, they are highly addictive. Manga are a great alternative to forcing the adults to mindlessly repeat infantile passages in textbooks because, after all, even if the language is incomprehensible the pictures can presumably be enjoyed.