Hajime Moriyasu memes, explained: Why Japan's notebook-obsessed coach is called 'Light Yagami'

Every time Japan stage a comeback at the World Cup, the camera finds Hajime Moriyasu on the touchline with his head down, scribbling away in a notebook, and the internet does the rest.

When Japan twice clawed their way back to draw 2-2 with the Netherlands in their opener in Arlington on June 14, the result was only half the story online.

As Daichi Kamada's late equaliser hit the net, social media was already filling up with photos of the 57-year-old coach hunched over his touchline pad, caught in the act of writing. The joke wrote itself: Moriyasu, fans insisted, had jotted down the names of the Dutch players and sealed their fate before the final whistle. The man has a nickname for it, “Light Yagami,” and it has stuck to him for four years now.

Here is where the meme comes from, and why Japan’s quietly methodical coach keeps getting cast as the villain of a cult anime.

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Japan coach Hajime Moriyasu memes

Moriyasu is rarely still on the touchline, and he is rarely without his notebook. Where other coaches shout instructions from the technical area, Japan’s boss tends to watch, write, and adjust, and it is that image, pen to paper while chaos unfolds in front of him, that turned him into a meme.

The notebook is real, and the habit is genuine. Moriyasu uses it to track patterns in the game and feed instructions to his bench, and against the Netherlands he leaned on a whiteboard too, holding up the numbers “4-5” before having an assistant flip them to “3”, “2” and “1” to push his players forward in search of a winner. To his supporters, it is the look of a coach who outwits opponents in real time. To the internet, it looks like something far more sinister.

The pattern has held all tournament. Japan followed the Netherlands draw with a comfortable 4-0 win over Tunisia, and they close their Group F campaign against Sweden on June 25 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington (7 p.m. ET). Every bold substitution and switch during a match only feeds the bit further.

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Who is Light Yagami?

Light Yagami is the central character of Death Note, and not exactly a hero. He is a brilliant, bored high school student who stumbles upon a supernatural notebook and decides to use it to wipe out everyone he judges to be a criminal, appointing himself a godlike executioner under the alias "Kira" while an elite police task force and a detective known only as L try to hunt him down.

What is Death Note?

Death Note is one of Japan's most successful manga and anime exports. Written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata, it was serialised in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2003 to 2006 before a 37-episode anime adaptation aired across 2006 and 2007 and carried the story around the world.

The premise is simple and grim. Light finds a notebook dropped into the human world by a shinigami, a death god, named Ryuk. Anyone whose name is written in its pages dies, provided the writer is picturing that person's face. That single rule, a name on a page deciding who lives and who dies, is the thread that connects a cult anime to a football touchline.

Why Japan's coach is called Light Yagami

The nickname was born at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. As Japan stunned Germany and then Spain to top their group, broadcast cameras kept cutting to Moriyasu writing in his notebook, and fans drew the obvious line: the coach was Light, the notebook was the Death Note, and Germany and Spain were the names inside it. The meme went viral, and it never fully went away.

The 2026 tournament simply gave it fresh legs. With Moriyasu again turning matches through substitutions and tactical tweaks, the comeback against the Netherlands was all the internet needed to pull the joke back out, and photos of him bent over his pad spread within minutes of Kamada’s equaliser.

It is, of course, all in good fun. The notebook holds tactics, not names, and Moriyasu’s edge comes from preparation rather than the supernatural. But as long as Japan keep coming from behind and their coach keeps writing it all down, the Light Yagami comparison is going nowhere, a meme that, much like the anime that inspired it, simply refuses to die.