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purpleajisai · 5 months

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The history in fiction: Parallels between historical Japan and the Narutoverse

Part 1: The era of the Six Paths

Naruto may not be a historical fiction and most people will think that the utmost historical reference in the series is the fact that ninja were a thing in feudal Japan. But what if I told you that there is an insane amount of historical parallels in the series? That we could actually place the events of the main timeline within real periods of Japanese history? In this two-part series, I’ll be explaining the many parallels, references and design inspirations of the main events and generations that shaped the course of the series that we all know and love. I’ll start with the era of the Six Paths (starting from Kaguya and ending with Indra and Ashura), and part 2 will be about the Warring States (dynamic between the Senju and Uchiha). At the end of each part, I’ll add useful links so that you can deepen your investigation and see my sources. Without further ado, let’s start overanalyzing.

Historical references and parallels in character design and dynamics

I’d place this particular era of the Narutoverse in the Heian period of Japan (or at least the most important people, the brothers Indra and Ashura). Considering that we’re spanning 3 generations here, I’ll separate the individuals involved in the following way:

Kaguya: End of Nara period (710 AD - 784 AD)

Hagoromo and Hamura: Early Heian period (794 AD - 1185 AD)

Indra and Ashura: Heian period (794 AD - 1185 AD)

Kaguya

On a side note, I’d like to add that I’m not really considering Tenji in the list above because he’s an anime only character. However, his case caught my eye so I’ll discuss him as well. Let’s start by evaluating Kaguya and Tenji then. Kaguya’s character design is a very classical archetype of Heian beauty standards and clothing. Long, straight hair with flowy kimono and a delicate face. Her unusual eyebrows are no coincidence as well, as in the Heian period the practice of hikimayu was commonplace in noblewomen.

"Hiki means "pull" and mayu means "eyebrows". Aristocratic women used to pluck or shave their eyebrows and paint new ones using a powdered ink called haizumi, which was made of soot from sesame or rapeseed oils." (source)

Left: Filler anime episode // Right: Manga panel

Above: Hikimayu through the ages of Japan

Another interesting fact that I’d like to point out is that Kaguya is a character with striking similarity to a Japanese folk tale, in this case the Tale of Princess Kaguya (Kaguyahime no monogatari), whose origin we can trace back to Heian Japan. The Tale of Princess Kaguya tells the story of a little baby girl who “fell from the skies” and was found by a couple of old farmers inside of a bamboo. She grew up to be extremely beautiful and was courted by lots of noblemen, but she rejected them all insisting that somebody would come for her, as she looked at the moon. Of course, Naruto provides us with a different ending to the story but this similarity can’t be overlooked.

Above: "The Receding Princess" from The Japanese Fairy Book, 1908

Moving on to Tenji, it gets a bit more complicated to place him in an exact historical moment as he has elements of many different periods. His hairstyle resembles the styling of the Jomon period, whereas the entire setting in the filler episodes are more similar to the Nara period with the many small kingdoms fighting for dominance within a vast land, just like pre-unification Japan. Therefore, I place Kaguya and Tenji at the end of the Nara period, because we see how Kaguya takes over Tenji’s rulership and is regarded as a noblewoman after she casts the first Infinite Tsukuyomi. I have to rely on some filler in this case because otherwise I can’t find a logical explanation as to why Hagoromo was so well settled and had a large group of people following his teachings if it wasn’t for Kaguya ruling some land that originally belonged to Tenji.

Hagoromo and Hamura

Let’s start with the second generation. Following the events of the end of the Nara period I quoted in the previous section, Hagoromo and Hamura would go in the beginning of the Heian period. Their character designs feature long, flowy tunics without a visible belt. Here you have an image of men’s clothes through Japanese history, the third one being a feudal lord of the Heian period. Compare and contrast with these anime and manga images.

Above: “Men’s Japanese clothes” by Glimja

Left: Filler anime episode with both // Right: Hagoromo manga panel

Again, since we get very few manga panels related to Hagoromo and his sons, I’ll refer once again to the filler episodes where he is shown as the ruler of a village. The spot within the Heian period in which I’m placing Hagoromo would be around 100 years after the Taika reforms which established one of the first codes of law in Japan and (Taihō code) and divided the country in provinces ruled by feudal lords. Curiously, around the time where the Taika reforms happened, there was an emperor called Tenji.

Indra and Ashura

The third generation of the alien-human hybrids is here, and I place them in the Heian period as well. My main reason to consider Indra and Ashura in the Heian period is the fact that this is the exact time period where the samurai originate. A common misconception is that a samurai is a Japanese warrior highly trained in the martial arts and weapons. While this statement holds some truth, the samurai were the military social class of feudal Japan, which means that there were people who were of the samurai class but had never touched a weapon in their lives. Therefore, samurai clans were not entirely composed by warriors but also had a number of people who lived a more “civilian” lifestyle. And you may be wondering, “what do the historical samurai have to do with the ninja that we see in Naruto?”. The answer is: more than you think. Historically speaking, the ninja is a samurai specialised in stealth and sneaking, the only difference with the Naruto universe is that the ninja we know and love from the show possess chakra and perform techniques with that.

The story of Indra and Ashura is strongly tied to the origin of ninja clans in Naruto, just as the Heian period is the origin of the samurai clans. From this time period I’d like to highlight the myth of Minamoto no Yorimitsu, more commonly known as Minamoto no Raiko. His story says that he slayed demons (yes, really) and saved many maidens from being abused by drunk oni with his great sword, Dojigiri Yasutsuna. The difference between myth and legend is that myths hold some kind of historical fact whereas legends are purely fictional. Minamoto no Raiko has been heavily mythified and his story sounds unbelievable or too much like a fantasy story until you realise that he did exist and that his sword is kept in a museum. Doesn’t this resemble how the origins of ninja in Naruto are almost like fantasy stories up until Hagoromo shows up in the 4th war and explains that everything was real all along?

Above: Ukiyo-e of Minamoto no Raiko and others fighting the demon Shuten Doji.

Just as Minamoto no Raiko is considered the first samurai, Indra could be considered the first shinobi. He was the first to channel and shape chakra to create jutsu, and he was considered as part of the legends surrounding Hagoromo. Please compare these two panel sequences, one is from earlier in the story and the second one is Hagoromo’s version.

The brothers’ character design can also be correlated with the Heian period. Indra’s eyebrows seem to be real but resemble the hikimayu design of Kaguya’s eyebrows, however he does add eye makeup. The people who wore makeup in the Heian period were nobles (mostly noblewomen), once again reinforcing my point that this family started out as feudal lords and eventually fused with the warrior class, becoming ninja clans. Although the character design for Indra and Ashura isn’t 100% equal to Heian Japan’s male clothing, the inspiration is subtle yet visible. I’d say that the inspiration is mostly for the plot rather than the appearance of the character. If you’d like to see more real Heian period clothing, this link has recreations of the outfits of the characters in the Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu.

Sources

These are some useful links that I’ve referred to while writing this post. I’d like to invite you to read them if you’d like to do further research on the beautiful history of Japan.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tenji

https://www.britannica.com/event/Taika-era-reforms

https://www.japanhousela.com/articles/princess-kaguya-a-tale-for-the-ages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikimayu#:~:text=Hiki means "pull" and mayu,from sesame or rapeseed oils.

https://www.thoughtco.com/beauty-in-heian-japan-195557

https://history.hanover.edu/hhr/22/HHR2022miller.pdf

https://www.tumblr.com/heian-collection/30869762024/beauty-ideal-in-heian-japan?source=share

https://thegate12.com/article/264

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for part 2, the Warring States era. Special thanks to @al-hekima-madara-blog for actually motivating me to write all of this down 💜

#purple rambles #purple's historical analysis #naruto #naruto shippuden #six paths #kaguya otsutsuki #hagoromo otsutsuki #hamura otsutsuki #indra otsutsuki #otsutsuki indra #ashura otsutsuki #oh goodness this was a very long post #but it was really fun to make!

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sealofreconciliation · 11 months

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The mechanics of Indra and Ashura's “reincarnations” (or; “Naruto and Sasuke got nothing out of being reincarnates other than being psychologically manipulated into trying to kill each other”)

An oft-repeated claim in the Naruto fandom is that the revelation that Naruto and Sasuke are the “reincarnates” of Ashura and Indra, the Sage of Six Paths' children, invalidates their, especially Naruto's, struggles at the start of the series, be it because that means they were fated to save the world or because they had a massive power-boost from birth.

How accurate are these criticisms, however?

In this post, i will be going over all the major points used to criticize Naruto and Sasuke's statuses as reincarnates being of significant benefit to them and making counter-arguments (using only manga canon, since the Indra and Ashura anime filler has some really weird and contradictory shit in it), starting with:

Their statuses as reincarnates means they were fated to save the world/be powerful shinobi

This is honestly the weakest point of the bunch, mostly because there's next to no supporting evidence for it in the series and what little we do get on the specifics all but debunks it; here's the only things Indra and Ashura's reincarnates are ever stated or implied to be destined to do:

As you can see, the only thing the series ever implies the Indra and Ashura reincaranates are destined to do are to kill each other and nothing else;there's nothing on them being fated to save the world or to become powerful shinobi themselves.

As a matter of fact, Hagoromo in the first and third pictures explicitly confirms there were multiple reincarnates prior to Hashirama and Madara, none of which ever became anyone of any relevance or power to the shinobi world, further confirming that being a reincarnate does nothing to guarantee you power in the Narutoverse. The argument that Naruto and Sasuke had any sort of beneficial destiny is a gigantic strawman of that plot point, and one that's easily debunked the second you try looking for evidence to support it.

Naruto and Sasuke were born with massive power boosts and special abilities due to being reincarnates

This is the stronger of the two main criticisms, if only because, unlike with the last point, there's nothing in the series to definitively disprove the notions that Ashura and Indra are reincarnated when their hosts are born or that the hosts receive a power boost from them.

There is, however, evidence against those notions, evidence strong and plentiful enough for me to make cases against those points.

Starting with the idea that Indra and Ashura “reincarnate” into their hosts at birth, Naruto in the third picture describes the experience like a ghost haunting, and both him and Hagoromo claim they can see/sense someone else (Ashura)'s presence and chakra inside of him, something that wouldn't make sense if it was a true reincarnation and Ashura had any significant amount of his chakra inside of Naruto from birth:

In addition to that, and this is the strongest piece of evidence against the idea that I&A reincarnate at birth, the manga goes out of it's way to all but confirm that the “change” Naruto had sensed in Sasuke's chakra during the Five Kage Summit was Indra choosing him as his host during those events:

While there's not enough evidence to prove this claim beyond a shadow of a doubt, i do think it makes for a very strong argument that I&A work more like transmigrants than reincarnates, choosing hosts they feel align with their ideals and have enough power to see it through; the idea that N&S were born as reincarnates of I&A is, while not as objectively wrong as the destiny argument, still a very shaky point to stand on that has plenty of holes in it.

Naruto and Sasuke gained powers when they became the transmigrants

This is both the strongest and weakest argument so far; it's the strongest because there's very little in the series that can be used to disprove that claim, and the weakest because there's not only very little in the series that can be used to prove that claim, but also no way to quantify how much power N&S got from being I&A transmigrants, let alone to prove that it was in any way significant.

It's completely unknown when Ashura chose Naruto as his host, so that's a dead end given how often Naruto gets stronger through the series; we do know Indra chose Sasuke during the events of the Five Kage Summit, being the reason his chakra got colder and Sasuke himself started going off the deep end, but even then Sasuke's best feat prior to the FKS was beating Deidara, after which he has very few good feats pre-FKS and multiple different power-ups, including getting his Mangekyo and multiple hatred amps every Uchiha gets, meaning there's no way to prove whether Indra was the reason he grew so quickly following Itachi's death or not.

The notion that Naruto and Sasuke got significant power ups from Indra and Ashura is honestly just an unfalsifiable claim, especially when there are multiple other ways they could have gotten stronger, and as such a very weak argument.

In conclusion:

N&S being transmigrants of I&A had fuck all to do with any sort of beneficial destiny or fate, as stated, shown and implied by the manga itself

N&S very likely only became transmigrants after 17 years of working hard to become as powerful as they did, to the point of impressing I&A enough that they chose them as the people they wanted fulfilling their ideas of how the world should be, as heavily implied by the description of the reincarnation process and Naruto sensing something different in Sasuke after the earliest point he started showing signs of being possessed by Indra

The burden of proof is entirely on the person making the claim that N&S got a power boost from becoming transmigrants, let alone that it was in any way significant, which can't be done because it's a borderline-unprovable claim

Tl;dr the reincarnation plot twist is based and good writing-pilled

#pro naruto #naruto #sasuke #naruto uzumaki #sasuke uchiha #indra otsutsuki #ashura otsutsuki #hagoromo otsutsuki #naruto analysis

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