Prior to protagonist Light (Yagami Raito) using the shinigami Ryuku’s (i.e., Luke = Lucifer?) death note to administer what he regards as divine justice, he is a law student disillusioned by what he sees as the impotence of the justice system. As Napier points out, much of Death Note is dedicated to depictions of Light and other death note users’ extra-judicial killings of criminals (2010, p.
356). Many of the deaths are the subjects of live media coverage, commented on sympathetically by the media and receiving support online. Despite being condemned by law enforcement, Kira garners significant support from the broader public.
In many ways, these themes reflect overtly what Hamai and Ellis (2006) and other scholars (i.e., Miyazawa, 2008; Leonardsen, 2010) have observed to
be a rapid rise in public fear of crime, together with a growth of the sentiment that the justice system is failing and that a more punitive approach to criminals is required. It has been asserted in Japan that one of the key causes for such sentiments is sensationalist reporting of crime and judicial incompetence in the mainstream media. This has been expressed most overtly in a rare journalistic mea culpa, published in early 2007 (just after the release of Death Note), by Japan Times writer Debito Arudou, who stated that his profession was largely to blame for what had become a ‘disturbing gap between actual crime in Japan and public worry over it’ (Arudou, 2007). This narrative of the media as the site of ethical abatement combined with undeserved potency in swaying public opinion forms a key theme in Death Note’s social commentary, revealed most directly in Napier’s statement that media figures such as ‘television moguls’ are depicted as ‘probably the least attractive characters in the whole series’ (2010, p.
158) on account of their self-serving and unprincipled manipulation of public sentiments surrounding the Kira phenomenon.
Though perhaps the product of earnest professional self-reflection, Arudou’s mea culpa was partly inspired by Hamai and Ellis’ 2006 article, which found that while Japan had one of the lowest crime victimisation rates, surveys indicated that public fear of crime was particularly high, a mismatch larger than in any comparable nation. Hamai and Ellis conclude that much of the blame for this mismatch lay in the presentation of a partial, inaccurate picture of crime trends in the media, including most prominently homicide and violent crimes with high ‘news value’. They assert that because people ‘rely more on media sources for opinions on crime than they do on official statistics’ media panic has had a very real effect on public perception (Hamai & Ellis, 2006, p. 169).
Hamai and Ellis’s research strongly resonates with Death Note in that the
‘moral panic’, which they attribute to this heightened fear, fed on the per-ception of the media’s portrayal of an incompetent police and judiciary and the sharp change in crime statistics that policy response to these earlier per-ceptions resulted in. They note that in the late 1990s the coverage of police scandals provoked policy reactions ‘that ensured that more “trivial” offenses were reported, boosting overall crime figures’ (Hamai & Ellis, 2006, p. 206).
However, rather than a rise in trivial crimes, the media focused on violent crimes, resulting in the general rise in recorded crime being linked to a
heightened likelihood of becoming a victim of serious crime and lowered chances of it being investig ated and solved. This vicious cycle led to a loss of confidence in the criminal justice system, morphing into the legitimisation of the ‘myth of the collapse of secure society’ (Hamai & Ellis, 2006, p. 169).
Hamai and Ellis drew attention to anecdotal evidence that this perspective has become institutionalised, manifest in what they call ‘popular punitivism’, similar to that seen in the UK and USA and evident in policy changes, which include higher rates and longer durations of incarceration for increasingly trivial transgressions.
Death Note reflects the focus placed on the roles of the media and the justice system; it is noteworthy that the majority of the characters are either employed as journalists or police. When the narrative introduces two other characters who have become kiras – Misa and Kiyomi – they are in fact media personalities.
Death Note also uses an abundance of cuts to sensationalist headings in papers, vox pops and exploitative television coverage of the kira phenomena – the most striking example being a producer’s excited reaction to the ratings gained by exclusive live coverage of the killings of innocent people orchestrated by the second kira, Misa. While the media is denigrated as narcissistic and self-serving in its coverage, the police – in spite of Death Note’s sober appreciation of their limitations – are dealt with more sympathetically. While it is arguable that they are the story’s ‘heroes’, the group that assists L are depicted generally as earnest, courageous and self-sacrificing people that make the best use of their limited abilities to try to protect society, while maintaining respect for legal procedure and due process. This principle is exemplified by L’s sacrifice of his own life to ‘prove’ beyond doubt what he already knew intuitively to be Light’s guilt.
In relation to the perceived incompetence of the police and judiciary, Light, the son of a high ranking detective, is able to get access to records of non-prosecuted cases. He reveals early on that he had lost faith in the effectiveness of the police and courts. This inspires him to seek out the criminal Takuo Shibuimaru – which leads to his acquiring the Death Note and becoming
‘Kira.’ This theme is strengthened by interviews and cuts to social media where Kira is praised for moving beyond the criminal justice system to reduce crime. Furthermore, in several scenes, Kira kills criminals after what are un-ambiguously depicted as their false exoneration in court. On top of this there
is a symbolic expression of the antagonism between the media and the police:
each of the three ‘kiras’ (two of whom are media personalities) use death notes at various times to ‘sacrifice’ innocent officers acting in the course of duty without any expression of remorse.
This parallels between the actions of media figures and those of the kiras directly symbolises the ramifications of the improper bestowal or acquisition of textual/discursive authority – in the case of the media, this occurs when its duty to protect the ‘common’ good is hijacked by base intentions for advancing self-interest through manipulation. The most overt expression of this is Kiyomi’s use of a death note to further her journalistic career: she kills a rival newsreader and organises ‘timely’ deaths at her own interview locations. She tells herself that her actions are justified as they bring retribution and reduce crime.
At a deeper level, Death Note’s drawing together of the kiras and the media could also be read as emphasising the ability of textual authority to ‘weaponise’
language, and in the absence of proper self-examination, to give effect to our darker instincts. In Death Note there is arguably an inherent call for those who exert influence on public discourse to reflect on the gravity of their respons-ibility. This is made more explicit in its manga version, in which L’s prodigy
‘Near’ tells Light that a normal person would be shocked on learning the de-structive power of the death note and would be reticent about using it again.
However, part of the allure of the death note is the disassociation it creates between its use and the gruesome violence of ‘killing.’ As the newsreader-come-kira Kiyomi says, she did not actually kill anyone – all she did was ‘write names’ in a book. When text is an intermediary between dark thoughts and their realisation in the world, there is a temptation to consider that the text has a moral immunity with regards to its consequences on account of the absolute right to freedom and impunity associated with the act of writing. This may be compared with the notion that freedom of speech does not imply freedom from consequences.