Something I've been curious about re: Death Note for a while - I'm by no means an expert in the relevant mythology and I know most of the stuff about the Shinigami in the anime/manga is just created for same - but the term is a Shinto thing, right?
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Replying to @BootlegGirl
Shinigami are not a genuine traditional Shinto belief There are various Shinto and Buddhist concepts that technically fit the definition of "god of death", but the term doesn't show up in print until the 19th century (the Edo Period, post-Western contact)
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
It is much more of a literary/pop culture conceit than it is genuine religion What exactly a "shinigami" is has no clear definition and instead you just see authors using the term for whatever image they have in mind if Death personified or of malevolent ghosts
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
It's the same kind of folklore as the Western "Grim Reaper", which is clearly related to certain classical concepts - there was a Greek personification of Death, Thanatos, the Bible mentions an "Angel of Death" But most of our lore of "the Grim Reaper" we made up in modern times
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
And, like, there's clearly enough common cultural concepts there that there's a "canon", so stuff like Discworld and Meet Joe Black and Family Guy can all have "Death" as a character and people know what to expect The "Reapers" in Dead Like Me and Supernatural, etc
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BootlegGirl
But that's not the same as saying that Death being a skeleton guy with a scythe or "Reapers" being particularly restless ghosts is actually a codified Christian belief It's just how folklore works
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Replying to @arthur_affect
Fair enough. All that said, do ordinary Japanese people believe they will go to Heaven or Hell? I guess that's the thing I'm stuck on here, I assumed the answer was "no"
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect
Most Japanese people are non religious, it’s one of the most secular societies on earth. Of those who do believe in some sort of life after death reincarnation is far and away the most common belief.
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Replying to @bazzalisk @arthur_affect
Right, and Light certainly doesn't seem the superstitious sort. So why would those rules concern him?
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect
Well he may not have believed in them before, but the existence of the death note rather suggests that the supernatural exists.
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Yeah part of the darkness of Death Note is it appears to pull back the veil of the supernatural but what it shows us doesn't fit any religion and doesn't make any sense or satisfy any needs from a human perspective
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It's this bleak Lovecraftian cosmic horror vision The closest thing there is to the gods are just parasites who mindlessly consume and destroy
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