Harusame

Glasses framed Harusame's grey eyes, and he kept his dark hair gathered into a relaxed ponytail that fell behind him. A long moustache added to his weathered, scholarly look. For clothing he favoured a decorated kimono in blue with orange edging, closely echoing what Utakata would later wear, and he layered a purple vest above it, wrapped a grey scarf at his throat, and finished the outfit with plain sandals.

Little of his temperament survives beyond his exchanges with Utakata, but those reveal a mentor who prized his student's survival above any assignment. He scolded the young man not for failing a task but for endangering himself to complete it, insisting that a ninja should neither flee a fight that truly matters nor throw his life away on one that does not. Beneath the sternness sat plain relief that his pupil had come home unharmed.

Harusame ranked among the powerful ninja of Kirigakure and took on Utakata, the host of the Six-Tails, as his apprentice. On one assignment the boy returned carrying a scroll he had been sent only to find, and the master reacted with anger, reminding him that locating the target had been the entire point of the job. Convinced the tailed beast would only bring his student misery, Harusame afterward tried to draw Saiken out of him. Because no method existed to remove a beast without killing its host, Saiken seized command of Utakata's body and struck the master down to save itself.

Utakata came away believing his teacher had betrayed him, and the bond between master and pupil felt hollow to him for a long while. Only later, according to Tsurugi, did he accept that Harusame had acted to spare him, finally recalling the words his mentor had spoken. His command of sealing was considerable, for he was the one who had bound the Six-Tails inside Utakata to begin with, and the bamboo jar and bubble pipe he carried point to a grasp of the village's soap bubble techniques.