Joji Sakurai reads between the lines of Shonen Comic's moral manga.

We know where this story is leading. Sweet young thing meets Hell's Angel, then redeems him from his own dissolution.

Then, the indispensable stroll along the seashore, the eloquent Christmas present, the globular, gushing eyes.

But then, almost eerily, a specter of contemporary outrage shatters this universe of pre-pubescent fantasy.

Young Kenichi is a hemophiliac infected with HIV. A year earlier his doctor assured him his medicine was safe and his test results negative. He comes home to find his wife sprawled out on the floor in a heavy sweat, her lungs ravaged by acute pneumonia.

As it happens, the doctor who had given Kenichi the green-light to get married, had falsified his blood test--changing his HIV positive result to negative--and continued pumping him with the same HIV-tainted blood products.

The details of the blood scandal that implicated Japan's medical profession, its health ministry and its pharmaceutical industry emerge from Kenichi's quest to uncover the truth about his tragedy and that of nearly 2,000 other hemophiliacs nationwide.

For the past five years Shonen Magazine, one of Japan's leading purveyors of adolescent pulp, has been publishing a "documentary" series tackling such thorny issues as the AIDS scandal and Japan's military policy during World War II. The project was spearheaded by 34-year-old Assistant Chief Editor, Yoya Kanke, who felt the need to confront Japanese kids with discomforting realities -- and recognized in manga the perfect vehicle for doing so.

"Young people are generally unaware of controversial issues in the news and in Japan's past," says Kanke, chain-smoking in the cluttered offices of Shonen Magazine. "But the popularity of the manga can draw kids into thinking about important topics. Our job is to present them with the truth."

Before putting ink to paper, Document series writers comb through clippings, interview subjects and visit sites to gather the facts. This journalistic style extends to using characters' real names. In the AIDS series, of course, names are altered to protect the privacy of the victims.

Says Kanke: "By presenting issues from the perspective of two or three human beings, we're able to explain things that are difficult to convey through the traditional style of newspaper reporting. Through the comics young readers can understand the human costs of Japanese wartime policy or the greed of individuals in the medical profession."

The first AIDS story focused on a junior high school student, infected with HIV through tainted blood products, and featured a sub-plot in which the boy stays in touch with fellow patients through the Internet. It appeared three years ago, when the tainted-blood scandal was getting only muted responses from the national press. Ryuichi Hirokawa, the journalist who wrote the AIDS scenario for Shonen Magazine, interviewed the young boy in the hospital over a year-long period.

The manga also tells stories about topics the media largely ignore: The expulsion of kids with AIDS from public schools and discrimination against infected patients by hospitals.

One episode in the story shows how a teenage hemophiliac infected with HIV dies of superficial wounds from a car accident as his ambulance roams the streets of Tokyo in search of a hospital that will harbor him.

"The two AIDS stories certainly generated the most response from our readers," says Kanke, "It really seems to have mobilized them."

The most recent addition to the "Document Comic" series presents the wartime experiences of Kiyofumi Kojima, a former officer in the Japanese Imperial Navy. Recognizing that his troops had been stationed in Luzon to be virtually slaughtered, Kojima defied the "Iron Oath" requiring soldiers to choose death over surrender, and delivered up his men to U.S. Forces.

"I want young readers to become individuals who think and act with independent minds," says Kojima, who now heads Veterans Against War.

Veering from traditional depiction of wartime violence, the story focuses on everyday horrors: the absurdity of administrative orders, the widespread starvation that lead to fratricidal butcheries among fellow soldiers. One sequence delves into graphic detail how a malaria victim can tell how close to death he is by the progressive changes in the color of his feces. Yet, what the 160-page "Document" mainly depicts is the long moral quagmire that Kojima must deal with as he trudges through the jungles of Luzon. At one point, Kojima deliberates on whether to obey an order to shoot any soldier who becomes unfit to continue marching with the platoon.

The history of military brutality against Asian neighbors during World War II, and the issue of Okinawa from the perspective of a Japanese-American soldier are among the projects that are slated to be developed in the future.

"There are so many issues that get shoved under the rug here," says Kanke. "Our purpose is not to protest the Education Ministry or the media; we have more of a positive outlook. We simply feel the need for kids to confront the facts and reflect upon them."

Kanke says he is concerned about the effects of blood-and-guts depictions that portray Japan's role in World War II as that of the victim.

"The danger is to make the spectator say `Poor things!' For one thing, that sort of approach never touches on the most important issues. But what's more disturbing is the fact that pity is a sentiment that creates distance. It wraps the whole thing up very conveniently in the past, whereas our job is to help young people make sure it doesn't happen in the future. It's essential that kids become aware of Japan's conduct during the war."

The war story `Shirohata no Chikai' (Vow Under a White Flag) took five months to complete. After sifting through all of the documentation available on his subject, Kanke, along with another Shonen editor and a scenario writer, visited Kojima at his home in Shimane Prefecture and conducted an extensive two-day interview. The story was written first as a narrative, then built up in a series of rough sketches by a team of draftsmen, before it was submitted to the principal manga artists.

Kojima was consulted for his approval at every stage of the project's development, and he was asked at length to verify details concerning uniforms, landscapes and diseases.

High school teachers around the country have flooded the Shonen office with requests to use the document series in classrooms as a supplement to textbooks. This spurred the magazine to sponsor discussion sessions in numerous schools around the country, during which kids can meet the figures whose lives are portrayed in the "Document Comic" series.

Kanke feels that his childhood in the Gunma Prefecture countryside has a lot to do with the passion with which he runs the "Document Comic" series.

"I have very vivid memories of running around in the mountains and playing in streams. Over the past twenty years, all of the mountains have been blasted away to make way for golf-courses, and the rivers are too polluted to fish in. These problems all existed, they were all building up, when I was a kid, and I had absolutely no clue. What I'm saying is that if we, my generation, had been aware of a lot of the contradictions in society that were happening back then, we might not have allowed much of what is happening right now. Today it's the same situation with our kids ...' Jusen? Can't do anything about it', `The Health Ministry? If they say so they're probably right.' So much apathy ... But if they become aware of people making a difference, they're equally capable of being the most powerful force of change in society. Look at the AIDS scandal, watch the demonstrations: It's the kids who have really blasted this story wide-open."