Novelist Peter Carey is already well known as a two-time winner of the Booker Prize. In this nonfiction book, he enters the world of Japanese comics, courtesy of his 12-year-old son Charley.

A devotee of the tough-guy/little boy film Kikujuro, Charley announces he intends to live in Tokyo when he's older. Intrigued, Carey joins Charley on his trips to comic book stores where English is a second language. Realizing that he has all the ingredients for an extended field trip and a father-son outing, Carey proposes that Charley come along to research comics in their native country, Japan.

The result is a subtle, pithy story about entering Japanese culture through this "garish back door," as he puts it.

And a profitable door it is. Japanese comic books, generally called manga, account for 40 percent of all magazine sales in Japan. As reported by Carey, manga had its beginning in children's magazines in the 1950s. As the children grew, manga artists began drawing more adult themes.

Today's readers have their choice of happy stories about saucer-eyed girls and starkly drawn dramas about Tokyo motorcycle gangs or wandering rogue samurai like Blade of the Immortal.

More Americans are familiar with anime, the animated films frequently based on manga. Anime takes a smaller share of the American entertainment pie than the Japanese, but the share is growing. When you can rent Princess Mononoke at King Soopers, you know American culture is changing.

Like any stranger in a strange land, Carey tries to make sense of it all. He looks for The Real Japan in a swordmaker's workshop and at a Kabuki theater, only to find out that he's been wrong about Japan: The Real Japan has been in front of him the whole time, best personified by Charley's friend Takashi.

When they first meet, Takashi is wearing a Mao jacket and knee-high boots, a look so carefully crafted that it seems hyper-real. Carey assumes this outfit is why his hotelier politely but firmly steers them away from having tea at the hotel. An American friend living in Japan explains later that Takashi is probably dressed as a second lieutenant of the third battalion, from the series Mobile Suit Gundam. The Real Japan is evolving, Carey reflects.

More opportunities to rethink his concept of Japan appear in Carey's interviews with manga and anime creators.

They also give Charley a taste of heaven on earth. Watching Charley with Hiroyuki Kitakubo, director of Blood: The Last Vampire, Carey acknowledges that it was for this glorious moment that Charley had suffered through Kabuki.

The moment is underscored by Carey's confession that, by now, his interviews seem more like interrogations. Whether because interviewing through a translator is difficult, or because Carey's questions about Japanese feelings may be impolite, the interviews seem pressing and uncomfortable for everyone.

One interview is more personal than others, and it has little to do with comics. While Charley's generation associates Japan with anime, Carey remembers the atom bomb and its aftereffects. It's not clear even to Carey how he met Mr. Yazaki, or what Mr. Yazaki's first name might be, but Carey knows when to let the character have the floor.

Mr. Yazaki was Charley's age when he survived firebombing and hunger in 1944. His story has something in common with the powerful anime Grave of the Fireflies. Written by Mr. Yazaki's friend Akiyuki Nosaka, the novel and film follow a brother and sister who are orphaned when Tokyo is firebombed during World War II. Mr. Yazaki's simple account is almost as moving.

Carey gets his chance to be wrong about Japan one last time, when Takashi's Kabuki-loving grandmother kisses Charley goodbye. "Must be the Real Japan. Let's get out of here before we learn we're wrong," Charley says.

You won't need to read all six volumes of the Akira series or have an adolescent at home to enjoy how Charley leads his dad around Tokyo. This quick armchair trip to the world of anime and manga will lure any reader into discovering Japan.

Christine Jacques is a freelance writer living in Golden