The Blessed Realm

Chapter One Hundred Thirty-Two: It's always more complicated

The Ph.D. student hesitated, and Sasuke watched him considering whether he should take Madara seriously as a source of knowledge, and whether he should openly dismiss him.

“It's more complicated, actually,” the young historian finally said. “At the time of his fight against the First Hokage Madara had already lost his position as head of his clan. He had lost this position during the peace negotiations with the Senju Clan. He had never been a politician, but rather a war hero, and he did not cope well with the fact that he and his superpowers were useless during peace negotiations, and insignificant after the foundation of Konoha. Capturing the kyuubi together with Hashirama gave him some sense of importance, but when this was accomplished he fell into obscurity again, and more or less out of boredom he challenged the Hashirama to fight him for the position of Hokage. Hashirama accepted. There's still a debate among historians why he did this, as no one would have accepted Madara as hokage at that point, not even his own clan. The Uchiha had distanced themselves from Madara and his idea of politics a long time ago. It did not make sense to hold the whole Uchiha clan responsible for Madara's actions, and to give them the police as a compensation for excluding them from all other positions of power.”

“So why then was the police given to the Uchiha?” Sasuke asked.

“It was part of the original peace treaty. The Uchiha took charge of the police, the Senju clan got ANBU and the post of Hokage. It was supposed to be a means of dividing power between the two clans. It was quite an innovative system at the time it was established, but with time, and with the inclusion of more clans to the village than just Senju and Uchiha, the system became dysfunctional. Senju understood this, Uchiha did not. Senju opened ANBU to other clans, and giving the post of Hokage to Sarutobi Hiruzen they also made clear that they did not cling to that highest position of power either. The Uchiha clan first considered this crazy: giving away power without necessity or compensation was beyond their understanding. Later, when they saw the consequences of these decisions, they blamed Senju of tilting the balance of power between the two clans by turning other clans into allies of Senju. They did not understand that clan affiliations had lost their significance and that it was the individual's capacity to serve the village that was most important now.”

“So you think this is the reason that people turned against the Uchiha?”

The Ph.D. Student shook his head. “It's always more complicated. History is not a series of events that follow each other in some kind of natural order, one event causing the next one. There's always other options: With time the Uchiha might have understood that the time of clans as centers of power was over. They might have become a mere family: a group of people bound by common descent or marriage who support each other raising children and caring for old people and who generally care for each other, but who don't compete for power with other families or clans. Maybe some young head of clan might have brought about the change. Maybe the other clans might have convinced the old conservative head of clan to change his policy by suggesting a new compromise and a new division of power: You open the police to other clans, we open ANBU to the Uchiha and make clear that they may rise to the office of Hokage just as anyone else.”



“My brother was admitted to ANBU,” Sasuke said. “This was when he began to behave weird.”

“Itachi? The boy who murdered your clan?”



“Yes.”



“Then he was the first member of the Uchiha clan to be admitted to ANBU since the foundations of the village. Though at that time this could not work as an offer of reconciliation. Other steps as ending the ghettoization would bave been more urgent then.”

“It was not meant as an offer of reconciliation,” Sasuke said. “It was a way of turning my brother into a murderer.”



He felt very weird. His intention had been to appear tough and strong during the interview, and to make clear what he thought of people who turned his clan into an object of research, but now, listening to the man's analysis of the history of the Uchiha clan, which was much more rational and made much more sense that Madara's account of hatred passed down from generation to generation, had touched and disturbed him. For a fraction of a second he thought he was fainting, then he got a grip on himself.

“Are you okay?” the young historian asked. “Do you need a break? Do you want to stop talking and come back another day?”

Sasuke shook his head. “I'm fine,” he said.

Nonetheless the man got up and prepared another cup of coffee. Naruto drew Sasuke into an embrace, sensing that Sasuke needed it. When the man returned they dissolved the embrace.

“So it was neither because of Madara's fight against the First Hokage, nor because of the Uchiha keeping the village for themselves that the rest of the village turned against them,” Sasuke said. “But what other reason is there? Madara told me it was becasue of the kyuubi's attack.”

“That's just a superficial reason” ,the Ph.D.student replied. “You don't accuse a group of people of calling a monster to attack your village if you don't already hold a grudge against them. Also I think that you should stop looking for any rational motives to ghettoize and even murder your clan. There aren't any. What people bring up are so-called rationalizations: on the surface they appear to make sense, but if you take a closer look at them their logic is flawed. Don't fall into the trap of believing them. Murderers always find good reasons why they just had to murder someone, but their reasons are mostly immoral. Don't believe them: There's never a valid reason for murder.”

“I never thought that those who ordered the murder of my clan had a good reason to do this,” Sasuke replied. “I always considered their murder a crime. I just want to know why it happened.”

“I'm not certain whether there was any way to prevent the murder,” the Ph.D. Student said, making Sasuke bite his lips: he had not intended to intimate that the murder might have been prevented.

“After being ghettoized the only viable option they had was leaving the village, and for this they needed to negotiate for a permission to leave.”

“Or they might have fought back.”

“That would have been suicide. They were a strong clan, but they were by far outnumbered. Also, if they had been victorious, what would they have gained? They would not have had any legitimacy, neither in the eyes of the people of Konoha nor in the eyes of ninja from other villages. They needed to find a way that made them appear the good guys: asking to be allowed to escape a situation of oppression, and convincing others that the reason for the ghettoization was not well founded. It's difficult of course when you are ghettoized, but not impossible. After all, they were still allowed to leave their compound for work, so that they might have found a sympathizing villager or a journalist from another country. They would have needed to be lucky, but they weren't lucky, and then it was too late. You should not blame them: they could not have prevented the murder.”

“I don't blame them,” Sasuke said. “I blame Danzou and the late Sandaime and his councillors.”

“It's not only them either. They could not have done anything if it had not been for the support of the population of Konoha.”

“And they had the population's support because the Uchiha were accused of calling the kyuubi to attack the village. But this is no reason to murder them.”

“No, it isn't. Though actually the murder hasn't been proven yet. At least I won't include it into my dissertation. I'll give a summary of the official version, express my doubts, and then I will explain why I focus on what happened during the years and decades before the massacre. I can't found my research on something that's not been proven.”



“Naruto and myself will find proof,” Sasuke said. “And we will tell the whole world that Danzou is responsible for the murder of my clan.”



“It will certainly come as a relief if you manage to do this before my dissertation is finished,” the Ph.D. Student said, making clear that he was not taking Sasuke seriously. “It would confirm my point that the mechanisms of ostracizing and scapegoating a considerable part of the population follow the same patterns everywhere, and that there's not much difference between a modern, complex society and a society that's still organized in a more archaic way. Still I think that what happened before the massacre or even before the ghettoization is far more interesting than the ghettoization itself, or the question who's responsible for the murder. I guess this will be painful to you as for you it was definitely the massacre that changed your life, but I think the interesting things happened before the ghettoization, as then the course of events still could have been altered.”

“The course of events could have been altered any time before the massacre,” Sasuke said. “But go on! I'm interested in your ideas, and you still haven't told me why in your opinion people turned against my clan.”

“I guess you're correct: even a short time before the massacre the course of events could have been changed. The massacre was not inevitable. It had just become difficult at the time to change the hatred and prejudice against the Uchiha, as there was hardly any contact between them and the rest of the population of Konoha. I'm more interested in how the hatred came into existence.”

 

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.