With the appearance of writer-illustrator Tezuka Osamu after World War II, so-called "story manga," or illustrated publications in comic book format, developed in a somewhat unique way in Japan.

At one time, the main readers of these publications were those born during the "baby boom" of 1946?1949, but as these readers grew older, many different types of manga came into being. After the 1960s, their readership steadily spread from the very young to many in their thirties and forties.

As of 1996, manga accounted for 22.0% of sales and 38.5% of all books and magazines sold in Japan, with their influence being felt in various art forms and the culture at large. Though some story manga are aimed at small children who are just beginning to learn to read, others are geared toward somewhat older boys and/or girls, as well as general readership.

There are gag manga, which specialize in jokes or humorous situations, and experimental manga, in the sense that they pursue innovative types of expression. Some are nonfictional, treating information of different sorts, either of immediate practical use or of a historical, even documentary nature.

The appearance in 1959 of the 2 weekly children’s manga magazines, Shonen Magazine and Shonen Sunday, served to firmly establish the sort of manga culture we see today. Both magazines put out a succession of extremely popular stories. Beginning in the 1980s, another manga magazine, Shonen Jump, remained for many years at the center of manga culture, with a weekly circulation of over 6 million and affiliated marketing systems for animation and video games. The Jump boom begin to fade somewhat around 1995, and in the summer of 1997, Shonen Magazine came into first place in terms of circulation and sales.

The manga-for-girls genre also become prominent. Female manga artists, born in the 1960s, as well as those of the “baby boom” generation, came to demonstrate their talents in the 1970s. They gradually widened the framework for manga productions. Delicate psychological depictions are made through special types of illustrative techniques not usually seen in manga produced primarily for boys.

In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the export of Japanese manga to Europe, America, and other countries in Asia. In places like Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, which used to be known for their pirated editions, large numbers of the most recent popular manga from Japan are published in translations, through formal license agreements with large-scale Japanese publishers.

In Europe and America, translated versions of such Japanese manga as Akira (by Otomo Katsuhiro), Nausica? of the Valley of the Wind (by Miyazaki Hayao), and Dragon Ball (by Toriyama Akira) have been very popular, and a surprising number even enjoy new manga publications imported from Japan in Japanese. In the United States, there have been conferences on the subject of Japanese manga and animation, and the genre itself is becoming a familiar word in many parts of the world.