Wayne Lammers is among the best of the younger translators of Japanese to English. He has rendered such classical texts as Fujiwara Teika's "The Tale of Matsura," and expertly translated such contemporary novels as Taichi Yamada's "Strangers" and Junzo Shono's "Still Life."
At the same time he has been involved in Japanese educational texts. For seven years he was translation editor for "Mangajin," a publication for students of Japanese featuring manga as language aids, and he now continues this interest in the present publication.
In "Japanese the Manga Way," he describes the advantages of manga as a teaching tool. "The text is natural, conversational Japanese, not discursive prose." Since manga is served largely by illustrations it allows "the action to move along much more quickly than when you are forced to tediously decipher passages of narrative."