Ballardian

Panels from Death Note 0, by Tsugumi Ohba (writer) and Takeshi Obata (illustrator).

Deep assignments run through all our lives; there are no coincidences.

J.G. Ballard, 1990.

Earlier, I noted the similarities between the manga New Engineering and Ballard’s first novel, The Wind from Nowhere. This is a connection that was flagged by the minicomic artist Tom Kaczynski. When I pressed Tom on this, he told me that although he wasn’t quite sure the similarities were deliberate, he thought they were still remarkable enough to be unpacked.

Wind is the ugly duckling of Ballard’s novels. With its generic plot and decidedly rushed feel, it’s been disowned by its author, left to feed off the crumbs of Ballard supporters looking to drill further down into the man’s back catalogue. Which is why I was amazed at the thought that something so obscure and unloved could have inspired anything let alone a node of the total cultural fission that is Japanese manga.

You wouldn’t think it could happen again, would you? But over at sub_divided, they’re claiming that Ballard’s 1959 short story “Now: Zero” is the basis for the 2003 manga Death Note! Unlike Tom Kaczynski, sub_divided doesn’t merely see this as an interesting coincidence; no, sub_divided is claiming direct inspiration:

“Now: Zero” was published in Japanese. Recently, in fact. Apparently, the connection between it and Death Note is not unknown to Japanese fans. There go my dreams of groundbreaking investigative journalism.”

Of Ballard’s shorts, “Now: Zero” is perhaps Wind’s equivalent, described by John Boston as “about as inconsequential a story as Ballard has published”. It tells the tale of an office milquetoast who discovers that if he writes about someone, they die, so he sets about eliminating his enemies via the act of writing. The twist at the end of the story is that the reader is supposed to die, too. As John remarks, there are Poe overtones, notably in the air of supernature and in the ornate language, yet there are also sub-Ballardian themes, almost but not quite hatched, including intertwingled concepts of the tyranny of time and the erosion of free will and the notion of the writer bringing into being parallel worlds of the imagination that challenge the structural integrity of the real. Plus, when the protagonist tries to wipe out the inhabitants of the town where he was born, a faint whiff of the messianic madness of The Unlimited Dream Company might take you. I also like how the twist in the tail is one that actually kills the reader, corny in itself but clever if you look at it as revenge on the type of story Ballard might have felt obliged to write at this stage of his career, the type that would only be bought by a magazine if it had the twist, a device demanded by readers of the day. But I’m stretching, because the 29-year-old Ballard was clearly still finding his voice and this story is, formally at least, an experiment that would soon be abandoned.

Panels from Death Note 0, by Tsugumi Ohba (writer) and Takeshi Obata (illustrator).

Now read sub_divided’s full post for some interesting commentary on the ways “Now: Zero” collides with Death Note, including this:

In the pilot, there’s a mention of an incident that occurred in the mid-seventies in which a bank branch was forced to close after a series of ‘accidental’ deaths. The first two people to die were the branch manager and assistant manager, both from heart attacks. The rest of the employees all died in accidents until, finally, the last remaining employee of the branch committed suicide. After the last employee died, it was found that a lot more people involved with the employee (but completely unrelated to the bank) had all died in accidents. It’s only very briefly mentioned so that two detectives have an incentive to further investigate a series of heart attacks that happened at a school in Tokyo. But it just strikes me as being quite similar to the beginning of Now: Zero from what I’ve read here.

And this:

[In "Now: Zero"] you have:

1. A cowardly person with a tedious desk job who uses a notebook to kill people. This person doesn’t have the sense/imagination/diabolic mind to disguise what he’s doing, and only thinks of killing his coworkers and other people who have personally affected him.
2. Police who suspect that these “accidental” deaths are too coincidental to be accidents, and who suspect that the killer was someone who knew the victims.
3. Main characters who panic when the police start asking questions about them and resolve to get rid of the evidence. In both cases, they decide to burn the notebook.
4. Surprise “meta” twists at the end.

Then combine the company that shuts down, and…can there be any doubt? It seems like the only really new thing in the Pilot is the idea of different people using the notebook in different ways. One policeman says he’d use it to rise in the ranks (like in Ballard’s story) and one says he’d use it to improve the world, the way Light attempts to in Death Note proper. It’s presented as a flawed idea — but it seems like the author has to think about it for a moment, which is honestly kind of scary.

The comments provide further hardcore analysis and plot detail of both works, even if a good deal of the readers hadn’t heard of Ballard before. That’s OK, I hadn’t heard of Death Note either, but those comments almost had me convinced that Tsugumi Ohba knows his Ballard.

Luckily, I’ve found an online archive of all Death Note manga, including the pilot story, which is apparently the one with all the “Now: Zero” protein. I’ve flicked through the pilot and I can tell you that there are definite similarities, even though the nerd is now a Japanese schoolkid who is bullied and the supernatural elements have been enhanced to include a demon from the netherworld who lost his “book of the dead”, which the schoolkid finds and which she believes to be a blank diary someone has lost. It could be influenced by Ballard, or it could be a coincidence. I’m not positive there’s conclusive evidence either way, especially given that, as sub_divided points out, Death Note focuses on the eerie quality of the notebook whereas:

“the focus in Ballard’s story is not really the notebook (it’s an old one the narrator digs out of his closet). The focus is really the concentrated resentment of the narrator — what if his outlet, his written fantasies, really did have the power to kill people. So, although the narrator himself eventually concludes that the problem lies with the notebook, and resolves to burn it, you can say that the notebook isn’t really the issue at hand.”

I’ll get back to you after I’ve read Death Note’s pilot in full.

But for now there’s one bizarre assertion that sub_divided makes that I feel I must set to rights to preserve Ballard’s good name. Sub_divided claims that “One of the websites I was reading observes that Ballard was an alcoholic and that this is reflected in his characters’ relationships, which are generally ‘pleasant in the morning, argumentative in the afternoon, and abusive at night.’”

Hmmmmm, I know Ballard likes a Scotch but he’s no alcoholic from what I’ve read. And can you imagine his passive cypher-characters getting into an abusive argument? After digging I find that in fact sub_divided is referring to crime writer Jim Thompson, who, according to Wikipedia:

“drank heavily; the effects of alcoholism often featured in his works… Donald E. Westlake, who adapted The Grifters for the screen, observed that alcoholism had a great role in Thompson’s literature, though it tended to be inexplicit. Westlake described typical personal relationships in Thompson novels as pleasant in the morning, argumentative in the afternoon, and abusive at night; behavior common to the alcoholic Thompson’s style of life, but which he ellided from the stories.”

Sort yourself out, sub_divided!