"I want to ask you, Jiraiya: sixty years ago, why did Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha join forces to establish Konoha?" Neji Hyuga asked.
"To bring peace to the Shinobi World," Jiraiya replied in a deep voice. "And to keep children from going to war, to end the Warring States Period."
"Was the one-country, one-village system established by Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha more peaceful than the Warring States Period?" Neji Hyuga asked again.
"Although I never experienced the Warring States Period, just thinking about how even four-year-old children had to go to war to survive is enough to imagine how brutal that era was.
"The First Hokage established Konoha and ended the Warring States Period. It truly did bring peace," Jiraiya said in his deep, magnetic voice.
"Hashirama Senju established Konoha, ended the reality in which four-year-old children had to go to war during the Warring States Period, and thus pushed the age at which children went to war back to twelve. Am I wrong?" Neji Hyuga said calmly.
Jiraiya wanted to argue that the First Hokage's original intention had been to bring peace to the Shinobi World and keep children from going to war.
But that was only an ideal. Whether it could be achieved was another matter.
In fact, it had not been achieved. Right after Hashirama Senju died, the First Shinobi World War broke out. All it had done was raise the age of children going to war from four to around twelve.
But it could not be denied that, with his ideas and wisdom, Hashirama Senju had done nearly the best he could.
For an illiterate man, Hashirama Senju had already been outstanding enough to accomplish so much and create a system for an entire era.
Though that system was riddled with flaws, continuing war