300 g10.6 oz
The Death Note weighs about 300 grams (10.6 oz, two-thirds of a pound) by our estimate. The series never gives a weight or a size, only that it looks and feels like an ordinary notebook. We assumed a black hardcover about 21 × 15 cm with 100 sheets of standard notebook paper.
| At B5 school-notebook size25.7 × 18.2 cm, same 100 sheets and hard cover | 450 g15.9 oz |
|---|---|
| Our estimate21 × 15 cm, 100 sheets (200 pages), hard cover | 300 g10.6 oz |
| The pilot chapter’s notebook60 pages, as Ryuk describes it in the 2003 one-shot | 150 g5.29 oz |
There is no official weight. The guidebook Death Note 13: How to Read says Death Notes are made of a material unknown to human science, but look and feel like regular notebooks. Inside, the pages are ruled like a school notebook. So we weighed it as one: a black hardcover about 21 × 15 cm (roughly A5) with 100 sheets, which is 200 pages if you count both sides.
Ordinary notebook paper is about 70 g per square meter. One sheet of 21 × 15 cm is 0.0315 m², so it weighs about 2.2 g, and 100 sheets come to about 220 g. For the cover we checked a real notebook: a large hardcover Moleskine (13 × 21 cm, 240 pages of 70 g paper) weighs 336 to 344 g, and its paper accounts for about 225 g of that, leaving roughly 110 g for cover, binding, elastic band and pocket. A plain cover without the extras is about 80 g. Paper plus cover gives about 300 g.
Size is the biggest unknown. Many Japanese school notebooks are the larger B5 size, and at 25.7 × 18.2 cm the same notebook would weigh about 450 g. The guidebook also says a Death Note takes the look of the notebooks of its era, such as a scroll in old Japan, so an older one could weigh something else entirely.
As many as you need. Rule XXXI, printed with chapter 43 of the manga, says the number of pages of the Death Note will never run out. That makes any page count a guess, so ours is simply what a notebook of that thickness would hold.
It was not always that way. In the 2003 pilot chapter, Ryuk says the notebook has 60 pages with 38 lines per page, and that the owner can ask the original Shinigami for another when it is full. A 21 × 15 cm hardcover with 60 pages (30 sheets) would weigh about 150 g.
The rules say a page taken from the notebook, "or even a fragment of the page, possesses the full power of the note." At our size, one sheet weighs about 2.2 g.
Light makes use of this in chapter 54: he hides a small piece of a page, with a needle to draw blood as ink, in a secret compartment in the watch his father gave him. A scrap a few centimeters across weighs only a few hundredths of a gram.
About 0.66 lb, or 10.6 oz, by our estimate. That is for a 21 × 15 cm hardcover with 100 sheets; a larger B5 notebook would be closer to 1 lb.
No. Neither the manga, the anime nor the How to Read guidebook gives a weight or exact measurements. The guidebook only says it looks and feels like a regular notebook, even though it is made of a material unknown to human science.
According to the rules, its pages never run out. Only the 2003 pilot chapter gives a number: 60 pages with 38 lines each.
The series never measures it. It is drawn as a plain black notebook with ruled pages, about the size of a school notebook. We used 21 × 15 cm, close to A5.
Roughly, since they are real notebooks. Shonen Jump has sold licensed replicas, and handmade ones vary a lot, such as a 22 × 16 cm version with about 300 pages, so their weight depends on size and page count.
Last checked October 3, 2026.
