I do not remember if you answered it already, so excuse me if I am being repetitive: are the Uchiha actually oppresed or the narrative just wants us to believe it?
I think calling the Uchiha oppressed prior to the massacre (important!) would be an overreach. They were a clan that was involved in a simmering power struggle with some other clans in their shinobi coalition village experiment. They were given special authority (police status) that had pros and cons. The limitation of their movements had pros and cons. The whole business of the Uchiha clan district doesn’t appear to be different than many other clan compounds.
Now, the way that they were surprise attacked and wiped out down to the youngest and oldest member? That’s oppression, yeah.
As I’ve mentioned before but am too lazy to look up, this kind of “wiping out an entire clan” thing is a historical thing that really happened for logical, if brutal and merciless, reasons.
The thought pattern goes like this: revenge cycles cause massive destruction over generations, potentially forever. How to prevent revenge?
Ok, if when you kill someone, you also kill everyone that would be honour-bound to take revenge on their behalf, you’ve stopped the revenge cycle.
So that’s the historical justification for killing babies. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
It makes a certain amount of sense, in a lawful evil way. It’s totally in character for Danzo to do it.
Anyway. The clan massacre was a sudden massive and overwhelming oppression. Before that, I wouldn’t say that the Uchiha were really oppressed. They were playing the political game, they just weren’t playing it very well.
Hm, I normally totally agree with you but in this case I only partially agree with you. Especially about the “They were playing a political game, and weren’t playing it very well,” bit. Are you only including the information we were given early series, and not the Itachi Gaiden stuff?
Because I think it was made quite clear in the gaiden stuff that Danzou was actively working against the Uchiha. He had rumors spread about them after the Kyuubi attack. He was working with Orochimaru to steal their bloodline (among others, but his required stealing eyes, so he was actively targeting Uchiha and killing them for it, poor Shisui), he had their clan moved off their original land to the outskirts of the village, where Fugaku claimed it was more difficult for the police to do their jobs, and where it was presumably harder to attract customers.
The Aburame’s preferences were taken into consideration:
The Uchiha’s concerns were dismissed:
So Danzou here is not only sequestering the clan away from the main village, he’s basically dismissing the police’s purpose. Hiruzen then jumps in to try and ‘make up for it’ by letting them have some space for private training grounds…. which only further isolates them from the village. As if training grounds – which are all over the village! – make up for not being as emergency-ready.
And on that note, I don’t believe we see other clans with shops in their compounds – in fact, we explicitly see an Akimichi restaurant that’s not in the clan compound – so that seems like it’s a special Uchiha thing that leaves them very cut off from the village. Perhaps worst of all, he had their clan under constant, active surveillance, which they knew about, which means the other ninja certainly did too. (Hell, if you include the light novel stuff, which I usually don’t, Danzou actively had some Uchiha killed and replaced.)
So, the Uchiha were physically sequestered in their own area, the department they were given that was meant to honor them was declared useless (”We’ll just use ANBU patrols!”) and its ability to function was reduced and isolated from the village at large, and finally, they were actively treated as a threat to the village, and not even secretly, so that had to have affected their ability to have relationships with anyone outside the clan. Their homes, jobs, and social prospects were all distanced from the village, with active enforcement of that sequestration from the government. That sounds like active, structural oppression to me.
(Of course, all this is not even getting started on Danzou just taking and Killing Uchiha clan shinobi, how easily he flexed his power to get the Uchiha massacred even without Hiruzen’s support, and how no justice was sought for them after the fact, but several of those points fall into line with your specification of before the massacre so I suppose they’re not quite as helpful.)
Cheloneuniverse 