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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ShinigamiSan'yūtei Enchō

c. 1890

Shinigami

San'yūtei Enchō

Meiji. Japan. Written in Japanese.

Rakugo story, circulated in stenographic print, in which a destitute man meets a death god who teaches him to tell whether a sick person will live, ending in a cave of candles that are human lifespans.

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

Disputed link, conjectural.

Enchō's story put a Western-style personified death god, called shinigami, into Japanese popular storytelling, along with the idea of human lifespans as measurable quantities. Death Note's shinigami extend their own lives by taking the remaining lifespans of the humans they kill. Popularizing the word and figure is the likely route; there is no documented use by Ohba.

Where it came from

Godfather Death (Der Gevatter Tod), Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm 1812

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Godfather DeathJacob and Wilhelm Grimm

1812

Godfather Death (Der Gevatter Tod)

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

German Romanticism. Germany. Written in German.

Folk tale in which Death acts as godfather to a poor man's son, makes him a physician who can see whether patients will die, and shows him a cave of candles that measure human lives.

What it handed down

To Shinigami (c. 1890)

Disputed link, probable.

Enchō's story follows the Grimm tale closely: death appears to a poor man, gives him the power to tell if the sick will recover by where death sits at the bed, and finally shows him a cave of candles that are human lives. Some scholars instead trace it to the Italian opera Crispino e la comare, which uses the same folk material.

Where it came from

The line stops here: recorded from oral folk tradition.

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Where it came from

What it handed down

To Death Note (2003)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Shinigami (c. 1890)

Where it came from

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