Sasuke & the Uchiha Clan: An Analysis

Chapter 2 Nakama

While the moment when Sasuke declared Naruto and Sakura as his nakama, his “precious comrades” held significant implications for defining his present bonds with Naruto and Sakura, his words held equally significant implications in showing what Sasuke’s clan meant to him and how he viewed his Uchiha brethren. Sasuke referring to his clan as “nakama” speaks volumes about his perception of his bond to his clanmate. Nakama is a familiar term that Sasuke uses to refer to his clan, full of warm comradery and affectionate fondness towards his deceased clanmates.

Nakama are a team, one’s co-workers, and nakama best correlates to the English word comrade, as nakama is used to reference people who share the same goal as you and strive towards the same purpose you are striving towards. You don't necessarily even have to love or even like your nakama, you simply must feel united to them by a shared purpose and objective. Nakama are united by a bigger purpose outside of themselves, striving together towards a larger goal, and it is this striving that unites and bonds nakama together. Whether one views one’s fellow nakama with disdain or whether as like family, the element that must always be present in nakama is a common goal that all nakama are working towards together to achieve.

During the fight with Gaara, Sasuke doesn’t say he’s lost precious people in his life before, Sasuke says he’s lost precious nakama in his life before.

Considering how Sasuke was only a child civilian at the time the Uchiha massacre took place, the fact that he views his late clan as nakama is highly interesting. If Sasuke were older when the Uchiha massacre transpired, him referring to the Uchiha clan as nakama wouldn't be all that notable or surprising of a statement, since the dynamics of his relationships to his clanmates would’ve shifted once he entered the workforce and became a true comrade to his Uchiha brethren, actively fighting and working alongside them.

But Sasuke pre-massacre was no warrior, nor even a co-worker. He was merely a child and a civilian, yet despite that this 7-year old felt a keen interconnection to his Uchiha clanmates. To Sasuke, his Uchiha clanmates weren't merely circumstantial kin grouped together by blood. There was an actual connectivity there, formed from a shared sense of purpose and common mission that all members of the clan felt and upheld.

Sasuke's spiritual connection to his clan is a strong bond indeed if already by the age of only seven he'd already gained a feeling of belongingness and unity with his clanmates, feeling connected in purpose with them. This is probably due in part to the culture and social climate of the Uchiha clan, as the Uchiha had a collectivist culture. By referring to his clan as “nakama”, Sasuke is insinuating that he feels bonded to his clan in a special way.

Sasuke's eagerness to become part of the police force with the rest of his clan is another reflection of his comradery with his Uchiha kin. Despite hailing from the village's most prestigious and powerful clan and bring a prodigy in his own right, Sasuke doesn't shoot for any ambitious goal as one would expect, a goal such as being Hokage or leader of the police force. Sasuke doesn’t aspire to any high-ranking or leadership position. He is content with being a regular member on the police force so long as it means getting to work alongside his father and his fellow clanmates.

Even on his feelings towards Itachi, it's the same. Despite being incessantly reminded of how prodigious and talented Itachi is, little Sasuke doesn't hold fanciful dreams of his big brother ambitiously rising through the ranks to become a great leader or Hokage. Sasuke's dream is fairly humble: he wants his brother to become a part of the police force too so that one day Fugaku, Itachi, and Sasuke can all work together.

Sasuke is immersed in the collectivist mentality of his clan from a very young age. One might surmise that it is precisely because Sasuke is so young that he embraces this unifying dependence on his clanmates, believing that each individual Uchiha are all parts of a larger whole that is the Uchiha clan. Sasuke wants to be an essential part of that whole too, helping and protecting his clanmates as they help and protect him. Children are dependent by nature until they're older, so it's unsurprising that little Sasuke would view an inter-connectivity and unity of purpose as natural or desirable, and embrace the clan’s collectivist culture.

Sasuke was instilled with a deep love for his people from a young age, growing up as one of them and being constantly surrounded by his Uchiha brethren. This might have been made even more potent in a younger generation Uchiha like Sasuke than in older Uchiha, since for Sasuke's entire childhood, the Uchiha were not allowed to assimilate into Konoha; they were quarantined off from the rest of the Leaf village. Of course Sasuke was free to go about the village as he pleased - all the Uchiha were - but he grew up in a world where his neighborhood was sectored off from the rest of the village. Since the Uchiha were sectioned off from the village, that would impact the younger generation of Uchiha by widening the gap between Uchiha clan members and the rest of the village. Because the Uchiha were no longer permitted to live among the people of Konoha, they were no longer neighbors with their fellow non-Uchiha villagers. Konoha and the Uchiha became separate entities purposefully segmented and kept apart, both socially and politically.

While a young and naive Sasuke never questioned this placement and never saw it as odd since it was all he'd ever known, the effects still remain: Sasuke's world was all contained in the little Uchiha compound, and everything outside of it was irrelevant or uninteresting. As a result, Sasuke established deep, comradely connections to his clanmates and was largely indifferent to the rest of his village. His neighbors were Uchiha, his family were Uchiha, all the local shop owners were Uchiha. Young Sasuke was a shy introvert, so he never had cause or reason to go adventuring far from home outside the compound when all he needed and wanted was contained within the barriers of the walls of his clan’s compound, apart from his lessons at the ninja academy. Even the Uchiha’s training grounds were tucked safely within the walls of the compound.

And so Sasuke developed a strong devotion and love for his clanmates in his early years, but a weak love and devotion for his homeland and the rest of the people of Konoha outside his compound world. Before the massacre, it is not so much as implied that Sasuke had any friendships or bonds outside the Uchiha. In fact, it's shown that he didn't, because despite being surrounded by kids his age every day at school, he made a point of never befriending any of them during his school years neither before nor after the massacre of his people. Even during his Team 7 genin days when Naruto and Sakura both started integrating with the rest of the Konoha 12 and making friends outside of their teammates, Sasuke still retained an aloof distance from his peers outside of Naruto and Sakura and refrained from establishing any friendships with the other kids, treating them with indifference and disinterest.

The loss of his clan dug deeper beyond the vicious slaughter of his parents and the betrayal of his brother - it was the loss of his entire people, his nakama, the group he felt bonded to through purpose. With the Uchiha’s destruction was his original dream destroyed as well, as well as everyone he'd ever known and loved. It's not hard to see why Sasuke struggled with finding happiness or a healthy sense of purpose after the Uchiha massacre. He became a sorrowful wolf eternally split from his pack, stuck always longing to be rejoined with them. Sasuke’s clan wasn’t just a group of people he happened to have distant blood ties to if he traced his pedigree far enough back. To Sasuke, the Uchiha were his family, his neighbors, his friends, his comrades, his nakama, those who he felt eternally linked to by a sense of purpose.

We see Sasuke’s deepest wish when he specifies that he wants Kakashi to bring back his mother, his father, his brother, and every single member of his clan back – only then would he give up on his hateful downward spiral into a cesspool of hate and revenge. Sasuke’s irrational demand showed that his distress and suffering is caused not just by the loss of his family alone, but by the loss of his entire people, each and every one of them. It’s rare for Sasuke to open up about his grief like this, but this invites us to a peek into his pain caused by the loss of his entire clan, not just his family.

In the Land of Iron arc, Kakashi tells Sasuke that “More than just your clan is in you – I think you know that too, Sasuke.” While that is true, and additionally good sentiment that Sasuke needs to learn, it doesn’t change the fact that Sasuke’s clan is within him, and a part of him that is permanent and unchangeable. Sasuke’s identity as an Uchiha is a huge part of who he is, an irrevocable aspect of himself that can’t be ignored.

Unfortunately, Sasuke’s bond to his Uchiha nakama became a barrier to his relationships with his Team 7 nakama, as Sasuke prioritized the Uchiha clan over his teammates to the detriment of everyone. Like Kakashi, Naruto also saw the problem, as Naruto realized that Sasuke’s obligations as an Uchiha clan member forced a sense of purpose upon Sasuke, compelling him to feel he must be the one to avenge his clan and serve the clan’s interests in the only way he knew how: revenge. That’s why Naruto notes that if in the present world he and Sasuke can never be friends, perhaps once they no longer have the pressures and responsibilities of being Uchiha and jinchuriki in the afterlife, then they won’t have a reason for conflict between them and they can finally be friends.

Naruto and Sasuke’s “death” in the limbo-world in the Final Valley fight episodes shows how right Naruto when he said that. Removed from the stringent responsibilities of being a clanmate, a comrade, of the Uchiha clan, Sasuke behaves drastically differently, behaving more mild-mannered and acting far less tense or aggressively in the “afterlife”, acting more friendly and conversational than usual. It goes to show how seriously Sasuke took his position as an Uchiha and how heavily the pressure of that title weighed down on the teenager’s shoulders and how deeply it a influenced and affected his behaviors, even down to his ability (or inability) to interact with his closest friends.

While Sasuke needed to learn to process through his grief over his deceased clanmates and move on, the fact remains that his clanmates are his beloved nakama and he can’t just forget how integral they are to his identity or how impactful his clanmates were on his life.