The Blessed Realm

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-One: Semi-Tribal Society

It was time for Sasuke's appointment with the Ph.D. student who wrote his dissertation about the history of the Uchiha clan. Sasuke asked Naruto to join him, and Naruto agreed, not only because this was what he always did, but also because he was interested in what the young historian had to tell about Sasuke's family.

It was a bit difficult to find the man's office in the department for history, and when they had found it the man was not there, but only some woman who told them to look for her colleague “as he must be somewhere”. Luckily they ran into him when they went to look for him.

The man seemed full of joy about seeing Sasuke, and Naruto was welcomed too, most of all when they told him that Naruto was from Konoha too.

“You want tea, or coffee? Let's go to our seminar room where it's less chaotic than here.”

Indeed the man's office was full of books and papers, and it was difficult to see where they might have put a tea cup.

The man led them to the seminar room, left them for a few minutes and then brought coffee for Sasuke and tea for Naruto and sat down opposite to them.

“I'm so excited,” he said. “It's well known that one young boy was spared when the Uchiha clan was murdered, but his whereabouts were unknown as he had left Konoha. So I simply cannot tell you how much it means to me that I meet you here in Music Town. Including your perspective into my dissertation will add an extra flavour to it, and raise it above the level of the typical scientific work that mostly consists in reading what other people wrote and reinterpreting it.”

Sasuke felt weird. Certainly the man was nice, but also he felt that he was being used.

“I'd like to know what kind of book you're writing,” he said. “And I want to know why in the first place you do research on my family.”

“Yes, certainly, you're perfectly correct,” the Ph.D. student said, accepting the question as a neutral question and not as the reproach it had been intended as. “I should explain this first. You're definitely entitled to know this before you talk to me. Well, our group does research on relationships between minorities and those who view themselves as the regular population. We are part of an international cooperation that deals with conflicts of this kind all over the world, and our part is conflicts within the ninja countries. So I chose the Uchiha clan as my own project for my dissertation, first because no one has done any research on it so far, and second because as a little boy I was fascinated by ninja. I considered them cool, and Konoha was my favorite ninja villahe because it was the strongest, and the Uchiha were my favorite clan because they were the strongest of Konoha. With time I grew more mature, of course, but part of my fascination remained. I began to follow the news on the ninja countries and developed a more realistic image of them.”

Sasuke felt flattered, but he was not content. He still felt that he was being used.

“Hearing of the massacre against the Uchiha clan changed this however. It completely destroyed what had survived of my romantic notions about ninja. You know, I've always been fascinated by the story of the two most powerful clans putting aside their differences and founding the strongest ninja village ever. I felt fascinated by the Uchiha. I still can't believe you're sitting right in front of me.”

Sasuke felt annoyed. He activated his Sharingan and put a genjutsu on the man: he made him see the room in flames, and also he made certain that he and Naruto were no longer visible to him. He made it last for half a minute, then he released it: he did not want to be cruel.

“Wow! Was that a genjutsu? I always wanted to know how it is to be inside one.”

People in Music Town don't think that anything may happen to them, Sasuke thought. When they see the room in flames they immediately believe in an illusion.

The Ph. D. student reached out for his cup of coffee, took a sip and choked. “Why is it black? I added some milk to it, I'm certain! I swear I saw the coffee with milk the moment I lifted the cup.”

“That was the real genjutsu,” Sasuke explained. “Something plausible, so that your opponent believes in it. It's an extra if you can hide it under a more spectacular genjutsu.”

“Good trick, though I hope you don't consider me your opponent,” the Ph.D student said, pouring some milk into his coffee and beginning to drink it. Then he continued his story:

“When I heard that the Uchiha clan had been murdered by a child I was all disappointed: They were supposed to be the strongest ninja of all, so how could it happen to them? Of course I was a bit childish myself at the time, judging them only by their strength, and my own childish desire for power and superiority.”

Sasuke considered the man's age. He was in his late twenties, so he must have been in his late teens when he had heard of the Uchiha massacre: just as old as Sasuke was now.

“My interests turned to other subjects, but I kept looking for news on the Uchiha clan. With time I grew more curious again, though in a more mature way, and I began to ask questions: Why had it been possible that the Uchiha had been killed by one of their own children? What had been the child's motivations? Had there been someone else, pulling strings from the background? And why wasn't there anyone else asking the same questions?”

People here don't believe that children turn crazy out of nowhere, Sasuke thought. I believed it, but I was seven at the time. Maybe when you are seven it's normal to believe that your thirteen-year-old brother simply turns crazy.

“Danzou and the Third Hokage of Konoha ordered my brother to murder our family,” he said. “There were people behind the massacre. My brother was not crazy or power-hungry, but he had been manipulated into believing that our clan was evil as they were busy planning a coup d'etat.”

“That's quite a strong accusation,” the Ph.D. student replied. “It's a possible explanation, certainly, given that there has never been an investigation into the background of the massacre, but there's other, less extreme possibilities too, e.g. that someone from another country was behind the massacre but that the administration decided to abstain from investigating the murder for political reasons.”

“It would still have been their responsibility.”

“Do you have any proof of your theory?”

“Our friend back in Konoha is searching for proof.”

“And if you don't yet have any proof, how did you get that idea that the government of Konoha might have been behind the massacre?”

“Madara told me.”

“Uchiha Madara? Is he still alive? Was he not killed by the First Hokage?”

“He managed to survive.”

“But even then he'd be extremely old by now.”



“He is, but he's still in good health. He runs around trying to abduct Naruto, and he wears a mask, but I believe that what he told me about my clan's murder was correct: they were murdered because the administration of Konoha ordered their murder. After all, what he told me about the ghettoization of my clan was true too.”

“It's common knowledge that the Uchiha clan was ghettoized,” the Ph.D. student said. “At least among historians. Did you not notice it when you were still living in Konoha, before your family was murdered?”

Sasuke shook his head. “I was seven at the time. I knew I had to return home immediately when school was over, but I thought that this was normal. I did not know that other kids met their friends to play with them. I only played with my brother and with my cousins.”

“So your parents didn't tell you that you were ghettoized and that no one was allowed to leave the ghetto without permission except for school or for work?”

“They didn't. My life seemed completely normal to me.”

“They wanted to protect you, I guess. They wanted you to grow up without knowing that your clan was kept under surveillance in some kind of giant prison.”

Sasuke leant back, considering the man's words. He understood them intellectually, but they did not touch his heart.

“You still haven't told me what you want to find out with your research,” he said.

“My plan is to investigate the mechanisms of turning a part of the population into a minority in a semi-tribal society and compare them to the mechanisms that are at work when the same thing happens in a more complex, more differentiated and more abstract society.”

“What do you mean, semi-tribal?” Sasuke asked, feeling offended.

“In Konoha, the primordial elements of society, that is families or clans, are still an important institution of the polity. There are other, more formal institutions too, as the military hierarchy, or ANBU that recruits its members from every clan except the Uchiha while they were still alive, but clan affilitations are still an important factor in politics.”

“Everybody loves their family and is loyal to them, aren't they?” Sasuke said. “Even here in Music Town family is important.”

“Family is important, but it's not of political relevance. In Konoha that's still different, though when you consider the village's development from the time it was founded to the present you can see that power has moved from the clans to more modern political institutions, institutions you are not born into but that accept you because of your talent and allow you to rise in the hierarchy according to your qualifications. There's exceptions from this development, however: First, the line between ninja and civilians has never been blurred, and only occasionally a child from a civilian family is accepted as a ninja, though never in a high position, and second, the Uchiha clan have always been in charge of the police, meaning that the police remained a clan's institution, and on the other hand the Uchiha were confined to the police and could not enter other segments of the military. Most importantly, they could not become members of ANBU.”

“We were in charge of the police because we were the strongest clan of all,” Sasuke replied.

The young historian shook his head. “You haven't understood the problem. Having the Uchiha in charge of the police means that they were defined by their descent. Members of other clans could choose what they wanted to be, for members of the Uchiha clan it was clear from the moment they were born. It meant that they were identified with the police, and the police was identified with them.”

Sasuke didn't know what to answer. The man's words went over his head and confused him, and also he felt that the man questioned his decision to become a policeman himself.

“It meant that the Uchiha clan was singled out as different. Maybe as stronger than others, as you said, but most of all different. When I started my research on what preceded the Uchiha massacre this was the first thing that stuck out to me: that while everyone else profited from the modernization and growing openness of Konoha's institutions and of society itself, the Uchiha didn't.”

“They were given the police after Madara left the village and fought the First Hokage,” Sasuke said. “It was a compensation for being excluded from all other positions of power.”

“Who told you so?”

“Madara.”

 

A/N: Thanks again for your reviews and your plusses! You can find my answers at http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/14965-blessed-realm/ .It is now possible to access the thread without registration at the forums.