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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1557

The Travels of the Three Sons of the King of Serendip (Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo)

Cristoforo Armeno

Italian Renaissance. Venice. Written in Italian.

Story collection in which three princes deduce the features of a lost camel they never saw from traces on the road.

What it handed down

To Zadig (1747)

Direct source, well documented.

Voltaire's chapter 'The Dog and the Horse' adapts the Serendip princes' deduction of a lost camel from its traces, which he knew through the French version of the Peregrinaggio by the Chevalier de Mailly (1719). The pattern of arrest for knowing too much is kept.

Where it came from

Eight Paradises (Hasht-Bihisht), Amir Khusrau 1302

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Eight ParadisesAmir Khusrau

1302

Eight Paradises (Hasht-Bihisht)

Amir Khusrau

Delhi Sultanate. India. Written in Persian.

Narrative poem in which the Persian king Bahram Gur hears a story from each of seven princesses, one of which contains the tale of the princes who reason about an unseen camel.

What it handed down

To The Travels of the Three Sons of the King of Serendip (Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo) (1557)

Direct source, probable.

Scholars have identified Amir Khusrau's Hasht-Bihisht as the main source of the Peregrinaggio's frame and its story of the princes who infer the features of a camel they never saw. The Venetian author worked from Persian material, possibly through an intermediary.

Where it came from

Seven Beauties (Haft Paykar), Nizami Ganjavi 1197

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1197

Seven Beauties (Haft Paykar)

Nizami Ganjavi

Seljuk period. Caucasus (Ganja). Written in Persian.

Romance on the life of Bahram Gur, built around seven tales told by seven princesses in seven pavilions on seven nights.

What it handed down

To Eight Paradises (Hasht-Bihisht) (1302)

Structural model, well documented.

Amir Khusrau wrote the Hasht-Bihisht as a formal response to Nizami's Haft Paykar, keeping the frame of Bahram Gur hearing stories from seven princesses in seven pavilions. Answering a Nizami romance poem for poem was an established practice in Persian literature.

Where it came from

Shahnameh (Book of Kings), Ferdowsi 1010

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1010

Shahnameh (Book of Kings)

Ferdowsi

Samanid-Ghaznavid. Greater Khorasan. Written in Persian.

Epic history of the Persian kings from creation to the Arab conquest, including the life and hunts of Bahram Gur.

What it handed down

To Seven Beauties (Haft Paykar) (1197)

Direct source, well documented.

Nizami took the life of Bahram Gur, his upbringing among the Arabs, his hunts and his kingship, from Ferdowsi's epic, and says in his prologue that he is filling in what Ferdowsi left out.

Where it came from

The line stops here: drew on the lost Middle Persian Khwaday-namag and oral tradition.

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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

What it handed down

To The Travels of the Three Sons of the King of Serendip (Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo) (1557)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Eight Paradises (Hasht-Bihisht) (1302)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Seven Beauties (Haft Paykar) (1197)

Where it came from

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