The influences behind Death Note

2003

Death Note

Tsugumi Ohba

Heisei. Japan. Written in Japanese.

Death Note (2003-2006), written by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata for Weekly Shonen Jump, follows a student, Light Yagami, who finds a shinigami's notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it, and the detective L who hunts him. It joins a cat-and-mouse detective duel to a Faustian bargain with a death god and a Raskolnikov-style theory of justified murder.

Where it came from

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1936

The Fiend with Twenty Faces (Kaijin Nijū Mensō)

Edogawa Ranpo

Shōwa. Japan. Written in Japanese.

Serial novel in which the detective Kogorō Akechi duels a master criminal of disguise, starting a long Japanese series of detective-versus-criminal contests.

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Ranpo's serial duels between the detective Akechi and a criminal genius made the battle of wits between two masterminds a staple of Japanese popular fiction. Death Note restages that duel with both sides hidden behind aliases. No direct statement by Ohba ties his series to Ranpo.

Where it came from

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1841

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Edgar Allan Poe

American Romanticism. United States. Written in English.

Story in which the reclusive C. Auguste Dupin solves a locked-room double murder by pure reasoning, establishing the detective story.

What it handed down

To The Fiend with Twenty Faces (Kaijin Nijū Mensō) (1936)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Hirai Tarō took the pen name Edogawa Ranpo from Edgar Allan Poe, and his detective Akechi descends from Dupin as a reasoning amateur. Ranpo's essays on detective fiction treat Poe as the founder he was answering.

To A Study in Scarlet

Direct source, well documented.

Doyle took Poe's reasoning detective with an admiring narrator-companion and the show of deducing a companion's thoughts. Holmes even mentions Dupin in the novel, dismissing him as 'a very inferior fellow', and Doyle later acknowledged Poe as the source of the detective story.

Where it came from

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1819

Mademoiselle de Scudéri (Das Fräulein von Scuderi)

E. T. A. Hoffmann

German Romanticism. Germany. Written in German.

Novella about a series of murders in the Paris of Louis XIV and the elderly writer who uncovers the killer, a respected goldsmith.

What it handed down

To The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Hoffmann's novella, set in Paris with a mysterious series of murders and an outsider who reveals the killer, has been proposed as a precursor of Poe's Paris detective tale. Poe knew Hoffmann's work, but a specific debt is not documented.

Where it came from

The line stops here: minor branch.

Find “Mademoiselle de Scudéri (Das Fräulein von Scuderi)” on Amazon

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Fiend with Twenty Faces (Kaijin Nijū Mensō) (1936)

To A Study in Scarlet

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)

Where it came from

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