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<div style="color: #dddddd; font-size: 0.82em; letter-spacing: 2px;">NINJUTSU · FORBIDDEN TECHNIQUE</div>
<div style="color: #ffffff; font-weight: bold; font-size: 1.4em; margin: 3px 0 1px 0;">Shadow Clone Technique</div>
<div style="color: #EC7124; font-size: 0.92em;">影分身の術 · <i>Kage Bunshin no Jutsu</i></div>
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| colspan="2" style="background: #111; text-align: center; padding: 0;" | ![[naruto_shadow_clone_technique.jpg|alt=Naruto surrounded by hundreds of his own shadow clones]]
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| colspan="2" style="background: #111; text-align: center; padding: 2px 0 6px 0; border-bottom: 2px solid #EC7124;" | <div style="color: #999999; font-size: 0.82em;">The Multi Shadow Clone Technique, chapter 1</div>
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center; width: 36%;" | English
| "Shadow Clone Jutsu"<ref name="ep1dub">''Naruto'', episode 1: "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!" English-language broadcast (VIZ Media, 2005).</ref>
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Classification
| [[Naruto/Ninjutsu|Ninjutsu]] — supplementary
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Rank
| <span style="background:#000; color:#EC7124; border:1px solid #EC7124; font-size:0.78em; font-weight:bold; padding:1px 6px;">B-RANK</span> <span style="background:#000; color:#E4574B; border:1px solid #EC7124; font-size:0.78em; font-weight:bold; padding:1px 6px;">FORBIDDEN</span><ref name="databook">''Naruto: Hiden — Rin no Sho, Character Official Data Book'' (Shueisha, 2002).</ref>
|- style="border-bottom: 1px solid #f6ddc4;"
! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Debut
| Manga: chapter 1, "Uzumaki Naruto!!"<ref name="ch1">''Naruto'', chapter 1: "Uzumaki Naruto!!" (Shueisha, ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'', 1999).</ref><br>Anime: episode 1, "Enter: Naruto Uzumaki!"<ref name="ep1site">"Enter: Naruto Uzumaki." ''NARUTO OFFICIAL SITE'' (official). [https://naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_225 naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_225]. Retrieved July 2026.</ref>
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Known users
| [[Naruto/Naruto Uzumaki|Naruto Uzumaki]] · [[Naruto/Kakashi Hatake|Kakashi Hatake]] · other elite Leaf ninja
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! scope="row" style="background: #000; color: #EC7124; text-align: center;" | Variant
| Multi Shadow Clone Technique — <span style="background:#000; color:#EC7124; border:1px solid #EC7124; font-size:0.78em; font-weight:bold; padding:1px 6px;">A-RANK</span> forbidden<ref name="databook" />
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'''Shadow Clone Technique''' (影分身の術, ''Kage Bunshin no Jutsu''), the '''Shadow Clone Jutsu''' of the English-language anime,<ref name="ep1dub" /> is a forbidden [[Naruto/Ninjutsu|ninjutsu]] in ''[[Naruto]]'' that creates real, physical copies of the user. It is the signature technique of [[Naruto/Naruto Uzumaki|Naruto Uzumaki]], who teaches it to himself out of a stolen scroll in the very first chapter of the series — on the same night he learns the truth about the [[Naruto/Nine-Tails|Nine-Tails]] sealed inside him.<ref name="ch1" /> Where the Academy's basic [[Naruto/Clone Technique|Clone Technique]] makes empty images, a shadow clone is a solid body that can run, talk, throw a punch, and use techniques of its own, and the sight of one boy filling a forest clearing with hundreds of himself is the series' first great show of power.

== What it does ==

A shadow clone is not an illusion. Each one is a physical duplicate of the user, and the people watching Naruto's first real use of the technique register exactly that with alarm — these are not after-images, they are real bodies.<ref name="ch1" /> Clones can fight independently, work together, and even perform other techniques.

The power comes at a steep price: the user's chakra — the energy behind every technique — is divided evenly among the clones. Make one clone and you are fighting at half strength; make a hundred and each body, the original included, holds only a sliver.<ref name="ch315">''Naruto'', chapter 315: "Special Training!!" (Shueisha, 2006).</ref> A clone that takes a solid hit pops out of existence, and the user can dismiss them at will. The technique also hides one more property, which the story keeps quiet about until much later: when a clone disappears, everything it saw, learned, and experienced flows back into the original.<ref name="ch315" /> For a newcomer it is enough to know the clones are real and that they are expensive — the rest becomes important in its own time.

== The night Naruto learned it ==

The whole of chapter 1 funnels into this technique. Naruto fails his graduation exam because he cannot perform the basic [[Naruto/Clone Technique|Clone Technique]], and the assistant instructor [[Naruto/Mizuki|Mizuki]] — feigning kindness — tells the miserable boy about a "secret makeup exam": take a certain scroll from the Hokage's residence, learn one technique from it, and graduation is his. The scroll is the [[Naruto/Scroll of Sealing|Scroll of Sealing]], an ancient document of forbidden techniques,<ref name="ep1site" /> and Naruto steals it believing this is a real test.<ref name="ch1" />

The first technique written in it is the Shadow Clone — and Naruto groans out loud, because clones are the one thing he cannot do. He practices in the woods for hours anyway, until [[Naruto/Iruka Umino|Iruka Umino]] tracks him down. Mizuki arrives on their heels, demands the scroll, and — to wound Naruto — breaks the village's strictest law by telling him the secret every adult has kept: the Nine-Tailed Fox that devastated the village twelve years ago was not killed but sealed inside a newborn — inside Naruto himself.<ref name="ch1" />

When Mizuki moves to kill Iruka, who shields the boy and calls him a proud ninja of the Hidden Leaf, Naruto stops running. He crosses his fingers into an unfamiliar seal and calls the '''Multi Shadow Clone Technique''' — and the forest fills with hundreds of solid, grinning Narutos, who beat Mizuki half to death. An astonished Iruka ties his own forehead protector on Naruto and pronounces him a graduate.<ref name="ch1" /> The technique Naruto was tricked into learning becomes, from that night on, his trademark.

== Why it is forbidden ==

The Shadow Clone Technique was locked away in the Scroll of Sealing for a reason. Because chakra is split evenly across every body, mass-producing clones can drain an ordinary ninja to the edge of collapse — a self-inflicted wound dressed up as a technique. The reference books grade it B-rank and mark it forbidden, with the Multi version a step higher at A-rank.<ref name="databook" />

Naruto is the great exception. As the host of the Nine-Tails he carries chakra reserves out of all proportion to his age or training, which is why a twelve-year-old Academy failure can hurl around a jōnin-level forbidden technique on his first night — and why, years later, his teachers design entire training methods around his ability to spend clones like small change.<ref name="ch315" />

== Multi Shadow Clone Technique ==

The '''Multi Shadow Clone Technique''' (多重影分身の術, ''Tajū Kage Bunshin no Jutsu'') is the mass-production version Naruto uses against Mizuki: where the base technique conjures a handful of copies, the Multi version summons them by the hundreds.<ref name="ch1" /> The chakra cost scales with the crowd, which is what pushes it to A-rank among forbidden techniques<ref name="databook" /> — for almost anyone but Naruto, it is unusable.

== A technique that grows with the story ==

For most ninja a technique like this is a tool; for Naruto it becomes an identity. Shadow clones open nearly every fight he takes, and the series keeps finding new corners of the idea — clones as decoys, as scouts, as teammates in combination attacks, and eventually as the engine of his training: because a clone's experience returns to the original, a hundred clones practicing for a day bring home what would otherwise take months.<ref name="ch315" /> Several of his most famous later techniques are, at heart, team efforts between Naruto and himself.

Experienced ninja such as [[Naruto/Kakashi Hatake|Kakashi Hatake]] use shadow clones too, but sparingly, the way the technique was presumably meant to be used. Only Naruto turns a forbidden jutsu into an everyday one — which is, chapter 1 suggests, exactly the kind of ninja he is going to be.

== See also ==

* [[Naruto/Clone Technique|Clone Technique]]
* [[Naruto/Naruto Uzumaki|Naruto Uzumaki]]
* [[Naruto/Iruka Umino|Iruka Umino]]
* [[Naruto/Mizuki|Mizuki]]
* [[Naruto/Nine-Tails|Nine-Tails]]
* [[Naruto/Scroll of Sealing|Scroll of Sealing]]