Prime Minister

The Prime Minister is described as an old man with a crimson robe and a grey beard extending to his chest. In the anime, the Prime Minister has a short grey beard and wears a purple and black robe with a turban on his head.

The Prime Minister served the Land of Redaku's previous King for thirty years. Because he had no family of his own, he committed himself to serving his country and its people, a task he took on happily. When the King became ill, the Prime Minister travelled to the Land of Fire and its surrounding countries. While there, the Prime Minister witnessed the shinobi and jutsu that were regarded as fairy tales back in Redaku, the peace and technological innovations that became widespread after the Fourth Shinobi World War, and the abundance of food and other resources that Redaku always struggled to have enough of. Before returning to Redaku, the Prime Minister learned how to make heavy weapons. The Prime Minister was impressed by the world of shinobi and desired to establish a private shinobi army back in Redaku. He hired fifty missing-nin to serve in this army and he hired Jiji to train them and improve their abilities; the Prime Minister gave Jiji his own room within the royal palace and assigned him a personal maid, Margo. At some point after this, one of the Prime Minister's allies, Zansūru, uncovered a way of reviving the dead and proposed using it to resurrect an army of immortal dragons. Zansūru would need the help of a ninja to accomplish this, so the Prime Minister approached Jiji: he'd learned that Jiji had fallen in love with Margo, and offered to permit their relationship on the condition that Jiji spend a year helping Zansūru. Jiji agreed. But when the year was nearly up, the dragon army was still not ready, and Zansūru could only secure Jiji's continued assistance by lying to him that Margo had died of an illness. To support the lie, the Prime Minister fabricated a death certificate and sent it to Jiji. Around the same time that Margo's death was being faked, Redaku's King died. It was not the Prime Minister with his years of experience who replaced him, but rather the King's young daughter, Manari. The Prime Minister thought this was a travesty, that somebody unqualified could be chosen to lead a country simply by virtue of birth. In order to demonstrate her unsuitability, the Prime Minister decided to undermine her rule. He first had his allies within the royal palace convince Manari to send her younger brother, Nanara, away to Nagare Village; the Prime Minister assigned Margo to go with him. Once he was gone, the Prime Minister began trying to devalue Nanara in Manari's eyes, characterising him as a "failure" who abandoned her and the responsibilities of leadership. Over the following months, he staffed the palace with people loyal to him, thus reducing the chances of Manari being influenced by anyone other than himself. The Prime Minister also purposefully did not tell Manari how to control the Shuigu, so that her effort to provide rain to the capital city instead destroyed its crops and drowned its livestock; the Prime Minister explained this to the public as being due to a flooded river. This created a famine within the capital that, in addition to the water shortage that Manari was trying to solve in the first place, caused many of the city's poorer citizens to die. The Prime Minister privately speculated to Manari that her failure to use the Shuigu was because of her own inadequacy, yet was careful not to lose her trust, assuring her that she was not at fault. He indulged her unwillingness to use the Shuigu again, allowing the water shortage to worsen as a consequence. The Prime Minister at some point secretly signed the Shuigu's contract, which would allow him to control it properly whenever the opportunity arose. Even before Nanara left for Nagare Village, the Prime Minister kept him marginalised, advising Nanara that it was better he have others read to him rather than learn to read on his own. Once Nanara went to Nagare, the Prime Minister would send tutors to teach him, but they would all quickly be driven off by Nanara's pranks. When that happened, the Prime Minister would send another tutor. The Prime Minister also ordered that the country's libraries be closed and sealed off, the explanation being that books were too precious to risk being dirtied by citizens trying to read them.