Bunpuku

Age and the shaven scalp common to priests define Bunpuku's look, framed by a thick moustache and beard and tired, heavy-lidded eyes. He dresses in priestly garb, a purple kimono-vest layered over robes with trailing white sleeves. Carved into his palms by his master are two kanji, one meaning accept and the other heart.

Warmth and wisdom mark the old priest. Though the village turns its back on him because of the creature he carries, he counts Shukaku as a friend and holds no grudge against it. When guards mock him he never returns the insult, trusting instead in a pacifist belief that any two beings, human or beast, can come to understand one another. Shukaku likens his gentleness to that of the Sage of the Six Paths.

Shukaku is sealed inside Bunpuku at birth, making him the beast's earliest host, and both come into Sunagakure's keeping before the tailed beasts are parceled out among the great nations. The villagers dread and loathe him, locking him away under guard until they forget he ever had a name and simply take him for Shukaku made flesh. As Shukaku's vessel he commands enormous, potent chakra and the beast's control over sand, and he restrains it for years without any cage while never sliding into the madness that plagues other hosts. The anime frames him as a gifted seal master who binds Shukaku within a tea kettle and wields rare arts said to shape unseen currents.

When Shukaku asks whether the village's rejection wounds him, Bunpuku answers only with gratitude, moved to tears by the beast's kindness and promising that someone will one day guide it. The extraction of Shukaku eventually costs him his life, yet his words outlast him. They reach Shukaku again long after and help the tanuki find peace with its final host, Gaara, whose own seal art in the anime traces back to Bunpuku through his successor Hoichi.