context: comics > why so successful?

A calligraphic predisposition?

This is a fairly simple point, and one that is persuasive to a degree: Japan uses three writing styles (or arguably four now that our Roman letters have become popular), of which one still bears great similarity to the original ideograms - basically simplified drawings of the words' meanings - and the other two are still considerably more pictorial than Roman script. This, it is suggested, leads to a greater visual acuity or alertness to reading visuals in different ways. This makes sense to me, but it's not obvious that the multiple scripts overbalances the more purely idiogrammatic language of the Chinese, for instance, so I don't think this is a sufficient explanation alone. We should look for more...

forwards: Narrative art