thoughts on Konoha as a functional town

[edenfalling]

Note to self: even if there are no roads, goods must enter and leave the village. I think there must be roads that come within one or two days' journey of Konoha, and there are guard posts of sorts on those roads. Merchants leave their wagons and load goods onto horses and donkeys, and human porters, and then ninja lead them through the forest to the village.

I suspect that most people who run those trade routes are actually citizens of Konoha, since ninja are a little paranoid about letting outsiders into their homes. Also, this would seem to lead to the growth of small trade fairs at the guard posts, to which foreign traders come once a month or so, and deal with ninja and with merchants of the Leaf.

There are probably also some industrial districts within Konoha itself, and some farmland both inside and outside the village walls. And I'm sure there's a river that runs either nearby or through the village itself -- probably it's been diverted to act as a sort of moat around some sections of the wall.

Trade and industry in Konoha are geared toward supporting the ninja, but Konoha is a thriving community in its own right. Leaf-steel is highly prized throughout Fire Country and neighboring regions. The village is also known for fancy woodwork and guard dogs, and as a training center for healers.

(Hidden Sand is known for theater, chemicals -- dyes, poisons, medicines -- and mechanical curiosities. Hidden Mist, probably for silk and lace. I dunno about other hidden villages.)

I believe Konoha is fairly young as hidden villages go. For centuries, ninja were organized into warring clans, and the villages developed slowly as various families made alliances and traded some of their secrets. This allowed them to pool contracts and standardize their training. The Fire Country clans were slow to adopt this pattern, mostly because Fire Country had an unusually high proportion of clans who depended on bloodline limits, or on family traits that weren't quite strong or clear enough to be considered true limits. They took pride in their individuality.

The Shodaime and Nidaime managed to gather the clans to a small village built around natural hot springs and an upthrust granite plateau. The indigenous villagers were slowly absorbed into the ninja culture, but generally didn't become ninja; instead, they performed support functions. Yukiko's clan, the Ayakawa, were the original guardians of the hot springs, which by that point had been made into an elaborate bathhouse with a small shrine nearby to propitiate the spirit of the springs. At some point, the Ayakawa sold the bathhouse to the town council, so it's no longer a private business.

Comments

[rianax.livejournal.com]

Just averaging out the generation span between the First Hokage and his granddaughter the Fifth (who is at least in her mid fifties)and the fact that the ninja villages were formed roughly at the same time, Konoha can only be a century old give or take a few decades.

The world seems to be fashioned as coming out of a Warring States type of era, but with a higher technology inclination. The Countries are less nations and more regions and govern more or less on the local level with loose but strong ties on the national level through a semi-fedual form of government. The world schematic seems in my humble opinion to be akin to backwater areas of China where technology is present but the infrastructure needed is absent for a complete intergretion.
Thus walkie talkies and movies can exist but not cellphones and internet access since the support systems are simply not there.

Konoha is obviously open to major trade with the mulitiple appearances of the road leading away from the villages as well as the rather obvious signs. Local agricultural communites surround and support Konoha since Team 7 has done several boring farm jobs outside of the village.

I would say the population of Konoha peaks around 10,000 or 15,000 with at least a fifth of the population serving Konoha in some military way, this giving the village a fighting force of a few thousand (which is rather high in my opinion since shinobi don't fight wars in our sense but rather a series of small smirshes).

[edenfalling]

I am blithely (and yes, consciously) ignoring any evidence that makes Konoha easy to find beyond the minor local farming communities that presumably supply a lot of the town's produce and meat. This is because it's a hidden village. It says so right in the name! :-)

Going by Valles's estimate of 12 new ninja a year, but assuming a longer active career (we have good evidence that ninja can continue fighting well into their fifties and sixties -- medical care seems quite good if you can afford it or are sort of subsidized by the government), that would give a maximum of 500 or so ninja in Konoha.

If one further assumes that the people who fail the jounin-sensei's examination don't return to the academy (which seems reasonable, or otherwise the 2/3 failure rate would not come as such a surprise to the new genin) but are shunted onto a different track, that could supply as many as 20 low-level ninja a year -- probably stuck as permanent genin, or required to work a lot harder before they get a chance to take the chuunin exam. That would add approximately 800 ninja to the rosters, bringing us to around 1300, barring deaths, crippling injuries, early retirements, and desertions.

It's probably safe to assume that Konoha has at least 800 active ninja at any given moment. In a population of 10,000 to 15,000 (which seems reasonable to me), that's not a huge percentage, but enough so that most people probably know one ninja personally. (I'd say people should also be related to at least one ninja, but since shinobi seem to be organized in families and clans, that becomes much less likely.)

Your point about the lack of support systems and infrastructure is very well taken. Also, I think the shinobi themselves would oppose a lot of centralization and the growth of business monopolies, since a fragmented political scene gives them many more potential employers.

I had originally assumed that Konoha was younger than the other hidden villages, but given the recent evidence of the number of Kazekage, it seems that Sand was founded (or formalized) at about the same time. This does seem logical given that the rest of the world/region seems to be in a process of slow consolidation. I now wonder whether the ninja organized to fight each other, or to present a more united front to the lords and business magnates -- it seems that some people would prefer to get rid of the shinobi if they could.

[rianax.livejournal.com]

/This is because it's a hidden village. It says so right in the name! :-)/

I take that distinction with a grain of salt; one can not have a town with a large population, giant gates, a ninja Mt. Rushmore, and be the semi-independent center of military strength with much hope of secrecy. The fact that clients can find the Villages as well as rival Villages because of the chunin exam not hold much hope for security based on secrecy.

/If one further assumes that the people who fail the jounin-sensei's examination don't return to the academy (which seems reasonable, or otherwise the 2/3 failure rate would not come as such a surprise to the new genin) /

That line of reasoning is flawed in that potential is not gaged by an equal set of standards, but by the personal whims of rather cracked individuals. Ninjas have to be pragmatic above all else; jounins have the right to test and refuse their teams but not deny them careers all together because of what amounts to a personality conflict. Graduation from the academy does not come as we are personally use to it: once at a pass or fail level. It has been more than heavily hinted that graduation rolls around several times a year for the senior class. Naruto is said to have failed graduation at least three times and still is in Irukka class and goes not to become a genin. Kakashi says that students who failed his test are sent back to the academy.

The fact that 9 (Gai's team is from the year before) students are the only ones allowed to graduate to genin could be a permanent limit imposed as not to boggle the upper forces with mentoring and low level missions thus cutting down Konoha workforce and ability to access more dangerous and better paying jobs. Or it could be flexible with the number of slots worked around the number of available jounin (which is a far more precious supply).

The genins themselves are an aberration like Itachi himself was among the ANBU. They are the heirs to prominent clans (Daisuke, Hinata, Kiba, Shin, to a lesser extent Ino, Chouji, Shikamaru), geniuses (Sasuke, Shikamaru), possessed (Naruto), or at the top of their class (Sakura). They are NOT normal and that fact is much remarked upon when they reach the chunin exam-- either in the words of others or the fact that the majority of the takers were in their late teens and twenties. They are a generation of legends in the making.

Anyway this path of reasoning allows Konoha a larger and more flexible military force than caculations based on population density. Thsi gives a greater leeway in face of accidents, death, desertion, and retirement and thus Konoha might only have fully active and trained ninjas around 800-1000, but the addition of trainees and semi-retired defense (ie. Inoshi or Hiashi) pushes the numbers up a thousand or so.