Homura Mitokado: The Former Elder Advisor of Konoha

In the shadow of every Hokage, two Elders keep watch — and carry weight: Homura Mitokado is one of them. Here is the profile of this Konoha advisor, as discreet as he is influential.

One of Konoha's two Elders

The Council on which Homura Mitokado sits bears a name that translation rarely lets through: Konoha Go-Ikenban (木ノ葉ご意見番), literally "the Leaf's Honored Opinion Watch". It debuts in chapter 93 of the manga and episode 55 of the anime, and Homura sits on it with his lifelong teammate, Koharu Utatane. The institution exists to help the Hokage govern and to guarantee that every decision serves the village's interest; the Naruto Quiz Book, page 21, also credits them with a counterweight function: preventing power from becoming too concentrated in the Hokage's hands.

The book Naruto: One Decade, One Hundred Ninja calls the two advisors "Konoha's Supreme Will" (木ノ葉の最高意志): their influence over the village government is such, and their support among the shinobi so broad, that the Hokage himself cannot ignore their wishes (page 90). His personal file, for its part, fits in the databooks: ninja registration number 000293, born May 8, blood type A, 166 cm and 55.2 kg in Part I, 68 years old in the first part and 72 to 73 in the second, occupation "advisor" (First Databook page 69, Third Databook page 73, Fourth Databook page 95).

Physically he is an old man with gray hair, a beard and glasses, a strong jaw, and a constant frown he already wears in his youth; as a member of the Council, he dresses very much like the sitting Third Hokage. At the table, the databooks give him natto and soba with scallions, and a dislike of okonomiyaki. His name, finally, can be read: "Homura" means "flame" (炎) and "Mitokado" "water gate" (水戸門) — a family name that the video games and the official card game wrongly render as "Mitomon".

A teammate of Hiruzen

Homura belonged to Team Tobirama (扉間班), the squad led by the future Second Hokage, Tobirama Senju; the book Naruto: One Decade, One Hundred Ninja, page 120, presents its members as the disciples of Tobirama and his brother Hashirama. It brings together the Second himself, Hiruzen Sarutobi, Koharu and Homura, and it is now disbanded. Under Tobirama's guidance, the three students run many missions together: Homura and Hiruzen have been friends since childhood.

The anime adds a childhood image the manga does not contain: shortly after the village's founding, Homura is shown in a classroom alongside Koharu Utatane and Torifu Akimichi, of the Akimichi Clan. This is exclusive to the animated adaptation, not an element of the manga. Very little is known about this team, whose history and missions are never detailed.

Their promotion follows Hiruzen's rise: when he becomes Third Hokage, Homura and Koharu become his advisors. But it is the accumulation — years of experience, knowledge, constant effort to make Konohagakure a better village — that over time earns them respect and a social standing comparable to the Hokage's. Close friends of the Third, they share his general vision for running the village, with one nuance that later events will make decisive: they are noticeably more draconian than he is.

The day Tobirama sacrificed himself before his eyes

During the First Ninja War, Team Tobirama is expanded into an elite squad the fourth databook calls the Escort Unit (護衛部隊, Goei Butai, page 171): under the command of the Second Hokage, it brings together Hiruzen, Koharu and Homura, joined by Danzo Shimura, Kagami Uchiha and Torifu Akimichi. Only one mission is reported for this expanded squad, and it turns into a trap: the Kinkaku Force (金角部隊, "Gold Horn Force"), at least twenty shinobi from Kumogakure, tracks it and then surrounds it on the battlefield.

Chapter 481, pages 4 to 10, details the deliberation, and this is where Homura parts ways with his teammate: he declares that, outnumbered as they are, there is no way to win, while Koharu proposes instead to wait and set an ambush, since the enemy knows neither their exact position nor their number. Hiruzen then offers himself as a decoy, Danzo next, and in the end it is Tobirama who offers himself so the other six can flee — not without naming Hiruzen as Third Hokage before he goes.

Homura watches the scene, struck with shock. The sacrifice is anything but symbolic: the Second Hokage is killed by Kinkaku, in chapter 529, page 11. One production detail completes the picture — Studio Pierrot's model sheets give Homura 169 cm at the time of Tobirama's death, three centimeters more than the height listed in the databook for Part I.

No technique to his name, but three unexplained scrolls

The idea of a purely political character does not survive the text. Chapter 503, page 7, shows Homura in combat during the attack of the Nine-Tailed Fox, alongside his teammates and many other shinobi, to restrain the beast and drive it out of the village. His outfit that night is detailed: a black bodysuit, chain mail armor underneath, a gauntlet on the right arm exactly like the one Hiruzen wears — and at least three giant scrolls, two on his back and one in front, whose use remains unknown.

No technique is credited to him, and his abilities come down to two things: those scrolls, and a judgment drawn from a novel. In Itachi Shinden: Book of Bright Light, devoted to Itachi's youth and written by Takashi Yano, Danzo argues that neither Homura nor Koharu is particularly gifted and that they have never accomplished anything notable on a battlefield; he adds that they have survived this long through luck and by knowing how to align themselves with more talented allies. This is a character's opinion, in a novel, not a verdict from the manga.

The anime offers the only other glimpse, and it favors Koharu: in the Konoha Plans Recapture Mission arc (episodes 197 to 201 of Naruto), the pair volunteers to find and remove the explosive scrolls the village is riddled with, and Tsunade sends them to an abandoned district; but the only technique shown is Koharu's, who pulls a scroll out of a wall in episode 200 and notes from its handwriting that it is very old. The first databook, page 69, provides the counterpoint: the jonin place absolute trust in Homura, because of his caution and his efficiency.

Hard line and the Uchiha affair

His line sums up in one sentence: his actions always have the village's interest as their horizon. But he is more militarist than the Hokage he serves and leans at times toward the hawkish ideology of Danzo Shimura. This leaning shows above all on two occasions: support for the crackdown on the Uchiha clan, then the drive to restrict Naruto Uzumaki's movements.

His support for the extermination comes after the discovery of the clan's planned coup against Konohagakure, and the motive ascribed to him is not hostility toward the Uchiha Clan: he and Koharu see in it the most advantageous course for the village. The Third Hokage, for his part, was seeking a peaceful settlement that Danzo and the two advisors considered hopeless, and it is this divergence that marks the tipping point toward the clan's downfall.

The alignment with Danzo is not total, however, and a counterpoint must be noted — one to be credited to Koharu and not to Homura: she is the one who takes Danzo to task for his absence from the fight against the Nine-Tails, when he blames the Third for the death of the Fourth Hokage. As for the sanction, it comes from the Hokage and not from the advisors: in episode 359 of Shippuden, the Third removes Danzo from the Council for acting without his consent and officially disbands Root.

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The Council offers the Hokage hat to Jiraiya

The Council holds an unambiguous prerogative: it falls to them to choose a new Hokage on the Third's death. Homura first appears in the series long before that episode, in chapter 93 of the manga — episode 55 of the anime —, during a meeting between the Council and the village's jonin-rank shinobi, devoted to the death of Hayate and to the threat Orochimaru poses.

After the Third's death, over the course of the Search for Tsunade arc, Homura and Koharu come upon Jiraiya spying on women at the baths, and it is Homura who reprimands him. The conversation then shifts to the situation between Konoha and Suna, which Jiraiya says he knows perfectly well; Homura lays out for him how grave the village's state is, its forces decimated, and concludes that in such a situation there is nothing left but to prepare for the worst.

Koharu then tells him he has been chosen as the next Hokage. Jiraiya declines; Homura replies that the decision is already made, since he is the person most eligible for the post. Jiraiya counters with another candidate, perhaps even more qualified, and announces that he is leaving to find her. Homura demands that three Anbu go with him; Jiraiya declines a second time and in the end takes only one person with him, Naruto Uzumaki.

The standoff with Tsunade over Naruto

The dispute with Tsunade begins with a step taken by Shizune: worried about the freedom the Fifth Hokage grants Naruto on missions that expose him to the Akatsuki, she raises it with the two Elders, who summon the Hokage. Homura makes the argument bluntly: Naruto is a jinchuriki, he should not leave the village and should remain under constant watch. Tsunade refuses and answers that he will become a great strength for Konoha.

Homura judges her too careless in her decisions even though she is Hokage, then yields and immediately moves on to the choice of Team Kakashi's fourth member, before asking Tsunade whether she has any objection to Danzo's suggestion: taking someone from the Anbu. The break comes later, during Pain's Invasion; while Tsunade is sending Kosuke to fetch Naruto at Mount Myoboku, the two Elders interrupt her to demand that Naruto be left where he is safe, Homura reporting that, according to Danzo, the Akatsuki's leader is leading the assault and is targeting Naruto specifically.

Tsunade physically grabs them; Homura, without raising his voice, demands to be released. She then throws at them that Naruto is a shinobi of Konoha and not a tool of the village, and that, unlike Jiraiya, Hiruzen and even Chiyo, they lack faith in the younger generation. The anime adds a third round in the arc of the Twelve Guardian Ninja (Shippuden, episodes 54 to 71): there Homura criticizes Tsunade for the haste of Danzo's arrest and for turning to Ibiki for the interrogation, before urging her to decide in Konoha's interest.

Sakura Hiden: the budget ruling against Sakura's clinic

The character makes his novel debut in Sakura Hiden: Thoughts of Love, Riding Upon a Spring Breeze, written by Tomohito Osaki, illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto and published on April 3, 2015. Two years after the Fourth Great Ninja War, Homura and the Fire Daimyo are targeted separately by unidentified attackers and both come away unharmed; for lack of proof of a link between the two attacks, Kakashi puts Sai in charge of investigating both incidents.

The heart of the passage is a budget meeting bringing together Kido Tsumiki, Koharu, the Daimyo, the Sixth Hokage and Shizune. Kakashi and Shizune argue there for additional funding for the clinic that Sakura opened at the Konoha hospital: a service to assess and treat children's mental health, created six months after the war, the adults having recovered quickly and the children far less so. Kido argues against it, holding that the recent attacks call instead for a strengthening of the Anbu.

The Daimyo leaves the decision to Homura, and Homura sides with Kido. The point is plain: he believes Konoha's funds must go to military strength, the Anbu in particular, and he made that choice while knowing the state the war had left many children's minds in. It is a concrete demonstration of his hard line outside the Uchiha affair, and it appears in neither the manga nor the anime.

Still alive under the Seventh Hokage

A common confusion has Homura disappearing along with the Third's era. Nothing of the sort: he and Koharu still sit on the Council many years later. Under the Seventh Hokage's rule, the character has aged considerably — deep wrinkles, a bald crown, a beard reaching down to his waist and a cane to get around. Koharu follows the same path: white, longer hair, heavily drooping eyelids, and a cane as well.

His reappearance in this era is exclusive to the anime Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, in the Mitsuki's Disappearance arc. Two chunin standing guard at the village gate are attacked by unknown assailants, Konoha is sealed off, and once one of the guards' condition is stabilized, the two Elders oversee the mind probe that Ino Yamanaka performs on him. The guard's memory yields an unexpected fact: Mitsuki left willingly with the attackers.

When Naruto reveals right afterward that Mitsuki is the son of Orochimaru, the Elders are outraged that such a secret was kept from them. Naruto justifies it by recalling that Orochimaru's conduct has changed and that he is helping investigate the Otsutsuki; the Elders, citing his unpredictable nature, still demand that the boy born in Oto be treated as a threat. Kakashi, for his part, approves of Naruto's decisions and notes that the Elders would never have let the child into the village had they known everything from the start.

Two Blue Vortex: the Elder who demands Boruto's death

In the manga Boruto: Two Blue Vortex, the character takes an openly repressive turn, starting with the Boruto's Return arc (chapters 1 to 15). After Omnipotence swapped, in the world's memory, the places of Boruto and Kawaki, and after the Seventh Hokage was apparently killed by Boruto, Shikamaru is named Eighth Hokage — a post he accepts only on a provisional three-year basis.

At a meeting held after the attack by Code that Boruto drove back, the two Elders press Shikamaru to accept the title permanently, to secure his standing on the international stage, and insist that Boruto be killed in order to appease the Daimyo on whom the village budget depends. Boruto is captured later, after helping defend Konoha against the sentient God Trees; he explains what these human-shaped God Trees are but refuses to reveal their source. Homura then demands intelligence: as a Hokage killer, Boruto is already sentenced to death, but what he gives up can make that death less painful.

Boruto gives up only one thing — the Seventh Hokage and Hinata are alive —, which irritates the Elders. Shikamaru then sends for Mitsuki: seized with rage, he tackles Boruto and uses the scuffle to free him from his restraints, on the Hokage's secret orders. The Elders promise consequences. They then receive Ikkyu Madoka, unhappy about the escape (chapters 16 to 25), then summon the Eighth Hokage along with Kobu, the Daimyo's chief advisor (chapters 26 to 34), raise the possibility of a mole in the village's inner circle and mock Konohamaru when he maintains that Boruto is not an enemy.

Summary Table

FAQ

• Who is Homura Mitokado?
  One of Konoha's two Elder advisors, with Koharu Utatane. A former teammate of Hiruzen Sarutobi, he advises the successive Hokage and weighs on the village's major decisions.
• What is his connection to the Third Hokage?
  They have been friends since childhood and are former teammates: both were trained by the Second Hokage Tobirama Senju, along with Koharu. After Hiruzen's rise, Homura becomes his advisor.
• Who is the other advisor at his side?
  Koharu Utatane, his lifelong teammate. The two form the Elder duo and almost always appear together. Danzo, of the same generation, also sits on the council but is not one of the two advisors.
• What role does he play in the Uchiha clan affair?
  He is one of the few people who know the truth about the crackdown on the clan and, with Koharu, supported it by aligning with Danzo's hard line.
• Does Homura die in Naruto?
  No. He survives the entire series and reappears, very old, in the Boruto era, where he and Koharu still sit on the council.

In summary

An uncompromising guardian of the old order, Homura Mitokado is a reminder that in Konoha power does not stop at the Hokage — it also plays out in the council's shadow.