Jōseki

Deep hollows beneath his eyes and creases flanking his nose gave Jōseki's face a heavily weathered look. He dressed in the customary robes of the Sunagakure Seniors, topped with a turban, and had black hair paired with dark eyes.

As one of the village's councillors, Jōseki keeps his attention fixed on maintaining order and calm across the Sand. He is among the handful who never came to accept Gaara, regarding him as little more than a vessel for Shukaku. When Akatsuki seized Gaara, Jōseki argued against any rescue and pressed instead for a new Kazekage to be chosen. Sitting on the advisory council, he ranks among Sunagakure's more astute shinobi. Early on, with the village dismissing Gaara as a failed jinchūriki, he stressed that survival of the economy would depend on the Fourth Kazekage's new techniques and on trade in Gold Dust, and added that the matter of Gaara still had to be resolved.

In the anime's Sunagakure Support Mission, Jōseki joined the other councillors and Baki to weigh how to respond to the Four Celestial Symbols Men who had breached the village. The group settled on sending the Three Sand Siblings to confront the intruders and recover Matsuri, though in truth this served Jōseki's own scheme to steer Gaara straight into the enemy and remove the threat he posed. Later, after the Fifth Kazekage was carried off by Akatsuki, Jōseki once more put the village's tranquility first. Never at ease with Gaara's rise to Kazekage, which he viewed as a reckless and dangerous experiment, he mused that the abduction might be a blessing and pushed to install a replacement quickly, a stance that provoked Kankurō. When the Three Sand Siblings returned from the Kage Summit, he was shown among the seniors reviewing the outcome and Sunagakure's next moves.