Spoilers: volume 1 of Chainsaw Man only.

When I filed to refuse an inheritance in Japan, two kinds of contact started arriving at the same time.

One came from the family court. It arrived by post, in an envelope.

The other came from the lender. The reminders kept coming, almost until the end.

Chainsaw Man opens with a boy who, in chapter 1 at least, only gets the second kind.

Denji is paying off a debt that was never his, and Japanese law has a formal exit for exactly that situation. So why doesn’t he use it? My reading is that an exit on paper isn’t the same as an exit in practice. Someone has to tell you it’s there, and the pressure doesn’t pause while you use it.

Where Denji’s debt comes from

Early on, a yakuza points out that the debt isn’t really Denji’s. To be exact, it belongs to his dead father.

A child left holding a parent’s debt is a familiar setup in Japanese comedy, too. In Hayate the Combat Butler (Hayate no Gotoku!), a hard-luck high school boy is stuck with about 150 million yen of debt that his parents ran up through gambling. It works as shorthand for a hard start in life.

Denji’s version has a twist. His father is dead. And that is where Japanese law has something to say.

What Japanese law says

What does Japanese law say about a dead parent’s debt? I’m not a lawyer, and I’ve only been through this once, so in this section I’ll stick to what the Japanese family courts say on their own website (in Japanese, as of October 2026). For a real case, check there or ask a lawyer.

When someone dies, an heir can accept everything, accept only up to the value of what they inherit, or renounce. Renouncing means taking on none of the dead person’s rights or obligations, assets and debts alike. Three details stand out to me:

• You apply to the family court that covers the dead person’s last address.
• The deadline is three months from the moment you learn that the inheritance has begun. A family court can extend it, but you have to apply for the extension within those three months.
• The filing fee is an 800 yen revenue stamp per applicant, plus postage and some supporting documents.

On paper, that is a cheap exit.

The court’s pages describe the procedure. They say nothing about the lender’s side of it.

So why doesn’t Denji use it?

The story never says, so these are my readings.

Nobody tells him the exit exists. The three-month clock only helps someone who knows it is running. In my case, it was my aunt who told me this option existed. Denji has no parents left and no one around him who would say “you can refuse this.” I read the first chapter as a story about a boy who is alone enough to never hear that.

The lender is also his boss. In the early chapters, the people who hold Denji’s debt are also the people who hand him devil-hunting jobs. They treat him like a toy, down to telling him to eat a cigarette.

For them, the debt is not just money. It is how they keep him working. In my case the reminders kept coming, and the court’s process went on alongside them. It’s hard to picture Denji quietly filing papers at a court while the people who own his debt stand over him.

One caution. Chainsaw Man is set in a Japan with devils in it, and the manga never mentions inheritance law. So I’m reading Denji’s situation against Japan’s real rules, not the story’s.

What the debt is really for

Whatever the reason, the debt does a lot of work in the story. It is why Denji’s dreams are so small: bread with jam, a girl, a warm place to sleep. It is why a kind word from Makima lands the way it does.

In real Japan, the way out of an inherited debt can be a form, a stamp and a deadline. I used one, and I’m glad I didn’t end up carrying the debt. In volume 1, the way out of Denji’s old life isn’t a form at a family court. It’s an offer from Makima. I wrote about what that offer turned out to mean in my essay on how Makima talks to Denji.