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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1887

A Study in Scarlet

Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian. England. Written in English.

First Sherlock Holmes novel, introducing the eccentric consulting detective and his chronicler Dr. Watson.

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

Thematic kinship, probable.

L is a reclusive genius detective with odd habits, deductive leaps and a contempt for ordinary police work, a type Doyle fixed with Holmes. L's aged assistant Watari, who handles his practical affairs, occupies a Watson-like position. The detective genre conventions reach Death Note through this line rather than through any stated debt.

To Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes

Direct source, well documented.

Leblanc borrowed Holmes himself, with Watson, renaming them Herlock Sholmes and Wilson after Doyle objected. The book sets the master thief against Doyle's detective in a series of matched contests.

Where it came from

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1747

Zadig

Voltaire

Enlightenment. France. Written in French.

Philosophical tale of a Babylonian sage whose misfortunes include being arrested for describing, from traces alone, a queen's dog and a king's horse he never saw.

What it handed down

To A Study in Scarlet (1887)

Thematic kinship, probable.

By the 1880s 'Zadig's method' was the common name for retrospective deduction from traces, popularized in Huxley's lecture of 1880. Holmes's reading of footprints and wheel tracks at the Lauriston Gardens scene applies that method, which Doyle knew through his scientific training.

To The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Disputed link, conjectural.

Zadig's inference of an unseen dog and horse from marks on the ground is the standard eighteenth-century example of reasoning from traces, and Dupin's method continues it. Poe's direct use of Voltaire's chapter is assumed by some historians of the genre rather than documented.

Where it came from

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1704

The Thousand and One Nights (Les Mille et une nuits)

Antoine Galland

Age of Louis XIV. France. Written in French.

French translation and adaptation of the Arabic story collection, which launched the European vogue for oriental tales.

What it handed down

To Zadig (1747)

Structural model, probable.

Voltaire wrote Zadig in the oriental tale form made fashionable by Galland's translation, with its Babylonian court, viziers and episodic misfortunes. He parodies the genre in the dedication's mock-oriental framing.

Where it came from

The line stops here: rests on a medieval Arabic manuscript compiled from Persian, Indian and Arabic tales, not followed here.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

To Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes

Where it came from

What it handed down

To A Study in Scarlet (1887)

To The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Zadig (1747)

Where it came from

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