Manpower

There were only so many ninja in the shinobi world. Even if the Five Great Shinobi Villages joined forces, they still could not assemble an allied army of more than one hundred thousand chūnin.

Training a ninja was costly, and not every trainee would succeed. Individual talent imposed major limitations. After all, only a few people could forge a path through sheer hard work like Rock Lee—and that was with the guidance of a renowned teacher. Besides, it was not as though Rock Lee lacked talent; his strengths were simply too specialized.

In Konoha, the vast majority of official ninja were genin. In peacetime, the promotion rate for chūnin generally ranged from one in ten to one in five. It was slightly higher during wartime, but never exceeded one in three.

The selection of jōnin from chūnin was much stricter. Konoha maintained a ratio of roughly one in fifteen, and that even included special jōnin.

Within the shinobi world, Kirigakure and Sunagakure had the strictest selection standards. Due to their limited resources and their elite-focused policies, they had no choice but to concentrate their scarce strength on nurturing the tiny number of exceptionally gifted geniuses.

Konoha's standards were roughly average, slightly higher than Kumogakure's. Because Iwagakure excelled at coordinated combat and relied more heavily on the advantages of large formations, it depended the least on individual elites. At the chūnin level, it held the greatest advantage.

The smaller nations beyond the Five Great Nations were far too lacking in resources. A ninja village capable of training even a thousand chūnin was already considered respectable. A country that could produce someone like Hanzo, who had once stood on equal footing with the Kage of the Five Great Shinobi Villages, would not find it too strange to squeeze out more than a