Naruto Jounin Training

[Knyght]

This felt like something worth its own thread: what is training actually like for the genin teams? For instance, the training we actually see Team 7 do was the tree climbing exercise and outside of that was only their missions. That's all we're actually shown but it's unclear how much he may have trained them off screen, if at all. How much involvement do jounin actually have in their students training? What kind of training would they be doing?

To quote myself (since the topic has popped up on DLP): Naruto does a fair bit of self-training and so did Lee (and Hinata). We also see some team training with Team 8, (and there's an earlier panel of them being tired out when Kurenai standing over them), Gai teaching his team the Initial Lotus and when Obito and Kakashi sparred in a recent flashback. I think it might be right that the jounin sensei are mostly there for the missions since Kakashi leaves once the mission is done, but they provide their students with guidance for their development and useful skills (e.g. tree walking) without having specific training routines. Independent training is probably encouraged since by the Chuunin Exams, Team 7 had only done 8 missions so there should a lot of free time even with the month-long Wave mission.

Does that sound about right or is there more (or less) to it?

 

[Altered Nova]

I always got the impression that the Jounin sensei is more of a supervisor than an actual sensei. The Jounin keeps them alive during their first few dozen missions and teaches them how to do their job of being a shinobi, but they have no actual obligation to train their genin's combat skills. Most of them probably just give their student's general training - i.e. they schedule sparring and practice lessons for the genin and watch them to learn what their strengths and weaknesses are, then advise the genin on where they need to improve most and what kind of jutsu they might be best suited for. But it's still up to the genin to actually accomplish that training and acquire any new jutsu on their own time and initiative. After all how are genin ever going to learn to become self sufficient chuunin if their sensei is holding their hands every day?

Stuff like Gai teaching his students the initial lotus and Kakashi teaching Sasuke the Chidori and Naruto Wind Element Transformation are probably unique exceptions. Aside from Lee and Sasuke most genin don't actually seem to learn any jutsu from their senseis, they only learn teamwork and improve their basics.

 

[nixofcyzerra]

While I agree with you, aside from Team 7, Tenten and Lee are the only genin who apparently aren't from any sort of "clan." Asuma and Kurenai don't really need to teach their genin combat skills, as they have their family specialities.

Lee's basically a mini-Gai, but where did Tenten learn to seal stuff into scrolls? Did Gai teach her or did she learn it somewhere else?

It also seems a bit negligent for Jounin to not pass on unique skills. What happens if and when they die?

 

[Altered Nova]

That's a good point, Jounin might be expected to (but not required) to pass on a bit more to genin that don't have a clan to learn ninja skills from.

Most Jounin probably have clans and/or children to pass their unique skills on to, few of them ever bond with their genin to the degree that Gai and Lee did. Failing that those unique skills might get transcribed to forbidden scrolls stored in the Hokage's residence and are normally only ever shown to other Jounin who have proven themselves trustworthy and whom the Hokage feels would be especially effective with them. Or they could just die with the Jounin if they really wish to keep it secret. I don't think Hiruzen at least would force a ninja to reveal or pass on their skills if they truly are opposed to it.

I wonder if Kakashi is an exception to that. We know his parents are dead and he has no nuclear family besides his dogs, but does he have an extended family to pass scrolls containing his unique jutsu on to? Or has he sealed them away and entrusted the Hokage to hold on to them?

 

[Dunstan]

That's a good point, Jounin might be expected to (but not required) to pass on a bit more to genin that don't have a clan to learn ninja skills from.

Most Jounin probably have clans and/or children to pass their unique skills on to, few of them ever bond with their genin to the degree that Gai and Lee did. Failing that those unique skills might get transcribed to forbidden scrolls stored in the Hokage's residence and are normally only ever shown to other Jounin who have proven themselves trustworthy and whom the Hokage feels would be especially effective with them. Or they could just die with the Jounin if they really wish to keep it secret. I don't think Hiruzen at least would force a ninja to reveal or pass on their skills if they truly are opposed to it.

I wonder if Kakashi is an exception to that. We know his parents are dead and he has no nuclear family besides his dogs, but does he have an extended family to pass scrolls containing his unique jutsu on to? Or has he sealed them away and entrusted the Hokage to hold on to them?

Thing is, "Clan" with the ninja we've seen, is just about as common as "Family" in that the only ones without one seem to be orphans.... Or at least the Fanon going "We know about as much about their "parents" as we do their "clan", so.... Lets just assume they don't have ether".

 

[ankokudaishogun]

I'm going with Surname==Clan. At least in Konoha, a lot of people in other countries seem to have a clan but lack a surname.

 

[Dunstan]

I'm going with Surname==Clan. At least in Konoha, a lot of people in other countries seem to have a clan but lack a surname.

That's what I do to, but on the other hand, it's, as we learned in a recent flashback, ninja tradition not to just hand out your surname to everyone you meet, and some of the ones "with no surname" very clearly come from a clan, so...

My head canon, is that anyone with a surname is from a "Clan", as clan is just another name for "family", but while the "tell no one" rule seems to be "dieing out" in the leaf, it's not "dead", so us just not being given a name, doesn't mean there isn't one.:unsure!:

The other villages likely just fallow the rule more closely... At least when talking to people from other villages.

 

[Knyght]

My headcanon is that practically everyone has surname and Kishi just likes being an awkward bastard about it. ^_^

 

[Altered Nova]

A clan is a bit different from a family. A family is just people related to you, while in the Naruto world a clan is a very large family that lives and works together as an organization with a strict hierarchy. They tend to have giant clan compounds and before the villages were founded ninja clans were all mercenary organizations where the "employees" were all born or married into the company.

This seems to be changing in the new post village era a bit, for example the Senju seem to have disbanded as a clan after founding Konoha but they probably still exist as a family, with people with the Senju name that are related to each to other spread out throughout the village. They just don't have a clan hierarchy with each member living together in a compound under the authority of the clan head like the Uchiha and Hyuuga do. Probably only the most powerful and famous clans and those with kekkei genkai and secret hijutsu held out and still operate as clans, while all the lesser clans followed the Senju's example and just became normal families.

 

[Dunstan]

A clan is a bit different from a family. A family is just people related to you, while in the Naruto world a clan is a very large family that lives and works together as an organization with a strict hierarchy. They tend to have giant clan compounds and before the villages were founded ninja clans were all mercenary organizations where the "employees" were all born or married into the company.

As far as I can tell, "Clans" in Naruto.... Work exactly how clans in Japan work/did work.:mellow:

No expert on the subject, but there doesn't really seem to be much difference between how their shown in Naruto, and how their shown in..... Just about every manga ever, only most of the ones in Naruto, that we've seen, seem to make their money as ninja.... Which doesn't really mean anything, as we've only really seen the ninja in any detail.

Only real difference I see between Naruto Clans and others, is... We've never actually had a confirmed case in canon of a ninja not being of a clan(even Sakura has what looks a hell of a lot like a clan symbol), at most we've had silence on the matter.....

 

[Altered Nova]

I don't know anything about how real clans in feudal Japan/modern Japan operate, all I know about Naruto clans is what I've seen in the manga. And from what I've seen in the manga they basically seem to be family run and operated corporations. They have logos (clan symbols), CEOs (clan heads), advertising (headbands and pubic chuunin exams) and their primary purpose is to acquire money (hence the ninja selling their services to daimyos and other clients and starting wars when business is slow to drum up customers). All that the founding of villages seem to have really changed is to create a few really big "clans" (i.e. villages) where the ninjas' loyalty is transferred from individual clans to the village instead. So they have wars less frequently because there are less actors to get into disputes with each other but the scale of those wars is increased significantly thanks to the increased manpower available to each actor (notably there were no ninja world wars until after the villages were founded). Not sure if that's really an improvement, Hashirama. -_-

Anyway my point was that not having a clan doesn't mean you don't have a family or surname, it just means that your family isn't an organization and doesn't have any authority over your life. It's entirely possible that many of the people that do have surnames in the manga don't have clans.

 

[nixofcyzerra]

It's possible that the security of the ninja villages meant that people didn't grow as much. Having an entire village to rely on means you didn't have to be as strong. Hash's idea of ninja villages could have been a form of partial disarmament.

The warring era was probably just as destructive as the shinobi world wars, if not more so, due to people like Hashirama and Madara.

 

[ankokudaishogun]

(even Sakura has what looks a hell of a lot like a clan symbol)

we KNOW that's her clan symbol, from the settei of the anime

 

[goldenarms]

This felt like something worth its own thread: what is training actually like for the genin teams? For instance, the training we actually see Team 7 do was the tree climbing exercise and outside of that was only their missions. That's all we're actually shown but it's unclear how much he may have trained them off screen, if at all. How much involvement do jounin actually have in their students training? What kind of training would they be doing?

Based off of everything that we've seen so far, I like to think it's mostly group training for missions, emphasis placed on teamwork, and and to regularly see how well they hold up in individual play, so as to better define their strengths and weaknesses. Promising talent would get additional lessons to grow a new branch of skill, though for the most part, it's like being in college. The jonin instructor is there to help you grow, but he's not going to needlepick at you it do well -- that's something you should be doing on your own, so there's going to be a lot of self-study involved, too -- note, Kakashi doesn't supervise his team after the first day, and he didn't really give them much help, either. Just showed them how to do it once, and left them up to their own devices after that point.

 

[ankokudaishogun]

note, Kakashi doesn't supervise his team after the first day, and he didn't really give them much help, either. Just showed them how to do it once, and left them up to their own devices after that point.

if you mean the tree-walking, they were doing pretty good and had Sakura master the exercise at first try, so there wasn't really any need for him.
Was it a "normal" training inside Konoha, he would have stood with them the whole time, though.

Probably, with most other exercises, Jonins makes sure the genin have a good enough understanding of them before letting them sort by their own.

 

[Altered Nova]

Based off of everything that we've seen so far, I like to think it's mostly group training for missions, emphasis placed on teamwork, and and to regularly see how well they hold up in individual play, so as to better define their strengths and weaknesses. Promising talent would get additional lessons to grow a new branch of skill, though for the most part, it's like being in college. The jonin instructor is there to help you grow, but he's not going to needlepick at you it do well -- that's something you should be doing on your own, so there's going to be a lot of self-study involved, too -- note, Kakashi doesn't supervise his team after the first day, and he didn't really give them much help, either. Just showed them how to do it once, and left them up to their own devices after that point.

This is pretty much the same as my opinion. The Jounin teach their students how to work as a team, general skills and strategy and their administrative duties as a shinobi. When it comes to their personal growth in combat abilities, that's up to the student to accomplish on their own. Either by seeking out their own teachers, working with their teammates to come up new skills, or convincing their jounin-sensei that they are worthy of becoming their apprentice as well as their student. Self-sufficiently and initiative I think are highly encouraged skills for ninja to develop.

Also I like to think that the Academy still occasionally holds post-graduate classes taught by special jounin which genin and chuunin can sign up for if they need some help with their training. Just to help out those without ninja clans, those with apathetic jounin-sensei and those who don't have the cash to hire a special jounin for one-on-one tutoring.

 

[Knyght]

There's also the library.

 

[ankokudaishogun]

There's also the library.

There is?
Because I don't think it was ever mentioned outside fanon

 

[Knyght]

Konoha Library. Sakura mentions studying ninjutsu so it's likely that it's filled with different kinds of shinobi-related knowledge, and at the time she was learning about medical drugs.

 

[ankokudaishogun]

Actually, the being in the library and studying ninjutsu are not necessarily related.

Even Sakura's book is apparently not that good... probably the library is full of generic informations and low-level theoretical knowledge. Lot of strategy and tactic books, I bet.

 

[goldenarms]

Actually, the being in the library and studying ninjutsu are not necessarily related.

Even Sakura's book is apparently not that good... probably the library is full of generic informations and low-level theoretical knowledge. Lot of strategy and tactic books, I bet.

I would think it's just like a normal library in our world, save it's more tailored to ninja. So there would probably be a Jutsu for Dummies series, along with fiction, biographies, a kids section, self-help books (Sai was reading one), gardening tomes, medical encyclopedias, etc. etc. etc. I would liken what Sakura was looking for to the equivalent of finding a book on how to build bombs -- ie, too dangerous/obscure to be shelved at a public library.

 

[Altered Nova]

Well yeah since even foreign ninja can enter the library of course it wouldn't contain anything classified, but it wouldn't be implausible to assume it has a restricted section that only verified Konoha-nin of higher ranks can enter which contains more sensitive information. Or better yet, that there's a completely separate hidden library that serves that purpose.

 

[Knyght]

Human experimentation is something I doubt you'd find outside of kinjutsu scrolls. The library would probably contain info on shape manipulating, nature transformation, different kinds of jutsu, hand-seals guide, generic jutsu scrolls, weapon guides etc etc. Plenty of general shinobi info as well as usual library stuff like goldenarms said. I'd think of it as a place where you can study up on ninjutsu but you wouldn't learn new ninjutsu there, except for the basics e.g. Body Flicker Technique or Temporary Paralysis Technique.

There might be a separate location where you can get permission to seek out scrolls that actually contain jutsu for you to learn, with your options being limited by your rank and experience. Edit:...Like what Altered said.