Bangkok Post, Thailand, Insider Column.

Dec. 4--COMIC RELIEF FOR LAZY LEARNERS: We've noted in this space before the difficulty of encouraging people to read anything if it isn't in the form of a Japanese comic-book or a get-rich-quick, self-improvement book that states the blindingly obvious.

People could learn a lot more about life from quality literature or biographies than from tree-killers such as Chicken Soup for the Soul of the Highly Effective Teenage Dog.

We're not quite at the point of surrender, but the news from Japan is not encouraging. One of the country's few recent business success stories worth telling is being told in the form of a manga comic.

The hero is Carlos Ghosn -- lionised in Japan as Le Cost Killer for his resuscitation of Nissan after being dispatched to Japan in 1999 by the automaker's French partner, Renault.

A more multinational manager would be hard to find -- he was born to Lebanese parents in Brazil and educated in France. The fact that the normally xenophobic Japanese warmed to this foreign chief executive was noteworthy in itself.

But they did, and now his life story is being serialised in five issues of Big Comic Superior, a popular line of reading material for commuters.

Mr Ghosn himself has written Renaissance, a book about his Nissan experience, which was a brisk seller in the Japanese version. Even without pictures.