Shinobi Union

Where the wartime Allied Shinobi Forces had drawn only on the Five Great Shinobi Countries and the samurai of the Land of Iron, the Shinobi Union throws its doors open to any hidden village that wishes to join. The five Kage steer the body, which takes commissions from clients and staffs each job with the members from across its nations best suited to the task. That arrangement hands every village an equal shot at work, a design meant to remove the grievances that once sparked war.

Under the Union, the villages and their countries rebuilt swiftly from the Fourth Shinobi World War. To keep the peace, each member posts a representative inside every other village so shared concerns can be aired and common interests pursued, and when the Land of Silence loomed as a possible menace, the Union's chief organiser Shikamaru was handed the job of heading off another war. The alliance's rules bar its members from taking up arms against one another, which is why the crisis over the Land of Flowers grew so dangerous. When Danjō, the Land of Earth's daimyō, ordered Iwagakure to seize that territory, a land shielded by Kumogakure, the Fourth Tsuchikage looked for a way to quit the Union rather than be dragged into fighting the Cloud, and Kirigakure seemed likely to side with Iwa over a supply of vital minerals. The standoff nearly tore the Union apart, since ordinary wars between villages had always been far more common than the rare global threat that had first united everyone. Danjō himself dismissed the Union as an obstacle to the true nature of shinobi, whom he saw as born soldiers meant to fight endlessly. The alliance was salvaged only when the Seventh Hokage and the Land of Fire's daimyō, Ikkyū Madoka, presented Danjō with a solution at the Continental Summit that talked Iwa out of the invasion.

Each village sends a delegate of high standing and promising prospects, and these representatives convene monthly in the Land of Iron. By the events of Shikamaru Hiden they numbered ten, among them Shikamaru Nara of Konoha as head representative and chief organiser, Temari for Suna, Chōjūrō for Kiri, and Omoi for Kumo, with Iwagakure, the Land of Iron, and four further seats held by unnamed figures.