1. Modern Japanese Gothic:    Hybrid Surface – Traditional Content 2. Translations and Scanlations 3. Comic Context    3.1. Pulp    3.2. Popularity    3.3. Plot 4. Gothic Inventory    4.1. Times of Transition    4.2. External vs. Internal    4.3. Shinigami Eyes and         the Castration Complex    4.4. Sex    4.5. Doubles, Balance, and         Concepts of the Self    4.6. The Omnipotence of Thoughts 5. Appeal of Japanese Gothic Draft 2, 070412.

   

1. Modern Japanese Gothic: Hybrid Surface – Traditional Content

     In The Gothic Vision, Dani Cavallaro writes that Gothic genres and subgenres “acquire significance according to a culture's contingent values and expectations” (Cavallaro, 97). One clear example of this is ‘Japanese Gothic’, increasingly popular with Western audiences in recent years. Though some may argue that labelling older writers like Ueda Akinari “as ‘Gothic’ is tantamount to ‘colonization’” (Hughes), the ‘dark fantastic/marvellous’ traditions of the East and West are still similar enough to warrant the use of the term ‘Gothic’ in both cases, which is what Henry Hughes argues for in “Familiarity of the Strange: Japan’s Gothic Tradition”. However, the object of this paper is not a traditional tale removed from Western influences. The immensely popular manga Death Note is in fact highly influenced by Western Gothic imagery. But beneath the imagery, the story is perhaps more traditionally Japanese than one might at first imagine.
     The familiar Gothic themes are there but the approach subtly different, the answers following an Eastern tradition rather than a Western Christian one. This approach is by no means unique to Japan – at least not anymore. It may be that Western Gothic has, not least in the form of films, ‘imported’ an Eastern sensibility, but that is the topic of something far more ambitious than this paper.
     This paper merely presents a quick inventory of some major Gothic traits found in Death Note and reflects briefly on how the approach differs from traditional Western Gothic. It is, in a sense, a framework for possible further study and so lacks in detail what it hopefully makes up for in overall perspective. As the primary source material is a 108-chapter graphic novel, an overview like this seems like a good place to start.

2. Translations and Scanlations

     Though Death Note was licensed for North American publication by VIZ Media in 2005 (AnimeNewsNetwork), only ten of twelve volumes have been translated thus far. However, all twelve volumes have been available for some time to an English-speaking audience through so-called ‘scanlations’, fan-translated scans of the original Japanese Shonen Jump chapters. While these are technically ‘pirate copies’, it is an undeniable fact that it is through these scanlations that Death Note first became popular with an international audience, and it is only through them that people not proficient in Japanese can access the complete story at this time. Therefore, any references in this paper are to scanlations. While it is true that some of these scanlations are of poor quality, and a full-fledged essay should take into account differences between the official and unofficial translations, I see no reason to cross-reference quotes for this paper. The story remains intact, as does the artwork.

3. Comic Context

3.1. Pulp

     From a highbrow Western perspective, Death Note is a bit of a ‘double whammy’ in the sense that it is both Gothic and a comic. As Cavallaro points out, it has been “common to associate Gothicity with tastelessness” and “pulp fiction” (Cavallaro, 9) and the comic book format has long been viewed as juvenile entertainment for the masses. Though both Gothic stories and the graphic novel have become more ‘respectable’ in recent years, both genre and format enjoy much stronger positions in Japan. In fact, Frank Miller, the man behind Batman: The Dark Knight Returns – the distinctly Gothic graphic novel that revolutionized North American comics and won much critical acclaim – was already in his earlier Daredevil work “heavily influenced by Japanese manga strips” (Wikipedia: Frank Miller).
     Unlike in North America where the comic industry is struggling to stay afloat, Japanese comics (called manga, 漫画, or komikku, コミック) “constitute the most popular kind of reading material in Japan” (Allen). The diversity of manga is as great as, if not greater than, that of Western novels and short stories, catering to all age groups and a multitude of subcultures and special interests. Though much of what has reached the West is manga aimed at a younger audience, Death Note is aimed at the young adult and adult market and features a primarily realistic style of storytelling and art.
     It could be argued that fantastic fiction is somewhat more ‘mainstream’ in Japan than in the West, particularly in North America. In The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature – The Subversion of Modernity, Susan J. Napier points out that “the ambiguous nature of truth, reality, and fantasy is an aspect that many Japanese writers work with” (Napier, 15) and, referencing Edward Fowler, suggests that even in Japanese realism, truth and reality are seen as subjective (Napier, 13) – a ‘truth’ often highlighted by Western Gothic writers through the use of, for example, unreliable narrators.

3.2. Popularity

     The strength of the format and the possibly less marginalized status of the fantastic genre help to explain the massive success of Death Note, but there is undoubtedly more to it than packaging and luck. Roughly 20 million copies sold in Japan (“Update: Death Note…”), two top-grossing live-action film adaptations, an anime series, and one video game – such exceptional success implies that this story, though dark and rather pessimistic, captivates its native audience more than most. The main reason for this, I would argue, is that despite its apparent ‘modernity’, the story is almost archetypically ‘Japanese’. Like Star Wars and Harry Potter adhere to Western storytelling traditions and archetypes, to take two well-known examples of massive successes, Death Note follows the traditions of the Eastern fantastic.

3.4. Plot

     At its most basic, Death Note is the story of how the notebook of a God of Death (Shinigami, 死神, ‘shi ni kami’, “death god”) is thrown into the human world by a bored Shinigami, Ryuk, seeking some amusement. This notebook is a ‘death note’, used to kill humans by writing down their names while picturing their face. The notebook is picked up Light Yagami (Yagami Raito, 夜神 月) who reads Ryuk’s helpful English usage instructions and decides to test it. When he realizes that he can in fact kill people using the notebook, Light is at first terrified but then decides that he is ‘chosen’ to use the notebook to cleanse the world, to kill all who commit crime and so create a utopia with himself as the ‘god’ of this new world.
     As Light’s elimination of criminals becomes apparent, he is dubbed ‘Kira’ (Japanese pronunciation of ‘killer’) by the public. At this point, the ‘world’s top detective’, the mysterious L, makes it his mission to apprehend Kira and have him executed for the murders he has committed. The rest of the story focuses on the pursuit of Kira/Light by L and, later, by L’s successors Mello and Near. At the same time, Light attempts to beat L, Mello, and Near by finding out their true names and faces so that he can kill them using the death note.