The Origin of Death Note?

Death Note, written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, was one of the most talked about manga in 2006. With the popularity of the manga, successful movie adaptions, and an anime TV series, Death Note was ranked as the No.1 anime and manga search term on Yahoo! Japan in 2006.

In early 2006, a Japanese blog published an article (the entry was taken down, but a Chinese version can be found here) about a 24-page one-shot called The Miraculous Notebook (不思議な手帖) by Shigeru Mizuki, which was published in the magazine Comic Mystery in 1973. The story of the one-shot revolves around a magical notebook: when a person's name is written on that notebook, the said person dies. Sounds familiar? Below is a summary (with some pictures) of the one-shot:

45-year old Yamada is an ordinary person. His co-workers always make fun of him, only Old Miss treats him differently.

One day, one of Yamada's co-workers sees him donating 1,000 yen to a shrine. After Old Miss hears about the story, she goes to drink with Yamada and asks him about shrine.

Yamada tells Old Miss the while passing by the shrine one day after drinking, he found a notebook lying beside a dead person. Many names were written in the notebook, the last of which belonged to the dead person (the guy's death was reported on TV a day later). Yamada says he realized the potential of the notebook after testing it on a dog (the potential being, whoever's name is written on the notebook dies).

Yamada tells Old Miss that after that incident, he didn't have to worry about being poor, so he always donated money to the shrine. After hearing the story, Old Miss borrows the notebook from Yamada.

Soon afterwards, Yamada's co-workers begin to die one after another. Yamada realizes what's going on, and how dangerous the notebook is when it falls into the wrong hands.

Yamada takes the notebook back and uses it to kill Old Miss. Because Yamada feels bad for all the death he had caused, he decides to end his own life by writing his name in the notebook. He then burns the notebook so no one else will be able to use it again. Later Yamada is killed in an accident (around the same time the notebook is destroyed).

While the author of The Miraculous Notebook, Shigeru Mizuki, has created many popular works (such as Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro), only a handful of people today know about this one-shot. The only difference between The Miraculous Notebook and Death Note is that in Shigeru Mizuki's story there are no Shinigamis (Death Gods in Death Note), and the origin of the notebook was never explained.

Did the author of Death Note get his idea from Shigeru Mizuki's short story, or was the similarity between the two stories just a coincidence? The world may never know.

Update (2007-01-15): We may never know if Death Note was based on Shigeru Mizuki's one-shot...or do we?