TOKYO -- Many Japanese look to Kosaku Shima to teach them the impeccable corporate etiquette that will take them to the top of the business world.
Many also look to Rintaro, a visionary, idealistic bureaucrat in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, to teach them about the secret machinations of the nation's ministries and to share his insights on energy policy.
Rintaro and Kosaku Shima boast social influence, enormous salaries and celebrity. Never heard of them? That may be because they aren't real. They are characters in Japanese "manga," or comic books.
Manga are a billion-dollar industry. Sales of these hefty comics, which go for about $3.50 each, account for close to a third of the total output of Japan's publishers -- 553 million copies of comics a year. This medium may be more influential than television or newspapers and plays a vital social function, supplying the flamboyant heroes that a highly controlled society can't produce.
The comics offer a rich fantasy world in a society where conformity is deemed a necessity, assertion of individual will is unacceptable and life itself is often eye-glazingly predictable -- all this, while gently reinforcing the values of working hard and supporting the status quo.
"Among Japanese media, manga are unquestionably the most powerful," says the creator of Rintaro, who uses the pen name Kuzu Haruo. In their subject matter and approach, manga range from fantastic, such as Doraemon the robot cat, to realistic, such as businessman Kosaku Shima, to educational, such as the world-famous "Japan Inc.," a 1,000-page tome on the labyrinthine ways of the country's corporate economy.
Their stories often blend real news events with outlandish fantasies, unsayable words, undoable feats and graphic sex scenes. So ubiquitous are their characters that for millions of manga maniacs, the line between comics and reality often blurs.
For them, the characters take their places alongside real people, capturing headlines, offering testimonials for advertising and winning the public's love and respect. There are manga with soap opera plots intended for female office workers. There is a branch of manga with an emphasis on mysticism and science fiction, aimed at girls in their early teens. There is a sports and adventure branch targeted at young men.
