Naruto/Kakashi Hatake

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CHARACTER · LEADER OF TEAM 7 Kakashi Hatake はたけカカシ · Hatake Kakashi
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Kakashi at the start of the series
Debut	Manga: chapter 4[1] Anime: episode 4, "Pass or Fail: Survival Test"[2]
Voice actors	Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese)[3] Dave Wittenberg (English)[4]
Affiliation	Village Hidden in the Leaves
[ Details — full series ▾ ] Rank Jōnin — an elite ninja[5] Status Sixth Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves in the post-war years; succeeded by Naruto Uzumaki[6][7] Signature technique Lightning Blade[5]

Kakashi Hatake (はたけカカシ, Hatake Kakashi) is an elite ninja of the Village Hidden in the Leaves in Naruto and the leader of Team 7, the squad formed by Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno.^[2] He is famous under the name "Copy Ninja" for the implanted Sharingan eye that lets him mimic other people's techniques.^[8] He hides most of his face behind a mask and most of his history behind a bored expression. He is the most important adult in the main characters' lives, and the series keeps finding heavier things for him to carry.

Kakashi enters the story as the teacher nobody would choose. He arrives hours late to his own first meeting and drawls that his first impression of the team is that he hates them.^[1] He then presents a survival test that only two of the three can pass.^[2] The official record adds the detail that matters: no team he has ever tested has passed.^[2] The bell test that follows is rigged so that individuals fail, and Team 7 passes only by breaking his rules to feed a captured teammate. That is the answer he wanted, and he states his code plainly: ninja who break the rules are trash, but ninja who abandon their friends are worse.^[9]

The team's first real mission shows the students who has been babysitting them. Confronted by the assassin Zabuza in the Land of Waves, Kakashi uncovers the eye hidden under his slanted forehead protector. His enemy recognizes him on sight as the Copy Ninja, the man said to have mimicked a thousand techniques with the Sharingan.^[8] The eye is not his by blood, because the Sharingan belongs to the Uchiha clan, and how Kakashi came to carry one is a story the series holds back for years. His one original creation, the Lightning Blade, is a concentrated lightning strike graded among the elite techniques of the village.^[5]

Part I closes with a flashback story devoted to him. As a boy genius, Kakashi served under a teacher of his own, the future Fourth Hokage, beside a teammate named Obito Uchiha, whose relaxed attitude he despised.^[10] The mission that killed Obito ended with Kakashi carrying his friend's Sharingan and his friend's values: the rule-obsessed prodigy became the man who never abandons a comrade.^[10] Nearly everything odd about the adult Kakashi, from the buried grief to the visits to a memorial stone, traces back to that story.

In Part II, Kakashi's fingerprints are on Naruto's growth as much as on any enemy's defeat. It is his design that turns shadow clones into a training method, compressing months of practice into days.^[11] When Pain destroys the village, Kakashi dies holding the attacker off, and he is restored only when the beaten Pain undoes the damage he caused.^[12][13] The Fourth Great Ninja War then turns personal in the cruelest way available. The masked man behind it is revealed to be Obito, alive, the friend whose eye Kakashi has carried for decades.^[14] Their reckoning is one of the war's emotional centers.

After the war, the man who spent a lifetime dodging responsibility takes the biggest job in the village. Kakashi serves as the Sixth Hokage through the years of rebuilding, a title the official novels carry on their covers.^[6] By the series epilogue he has handed the office to the Seventh Hokage, his own student Naruto, and settled into a well-earned retirement.^[6][7]

Kakashi is a study in misdirection. He is perpetually late and always armed with a transparent excuse, he reads a series of adult romance novels in public without embarrassment, and he treats most emergencies with a bored drawl.^[9] The manner is camouflage. He is the most reliable adult in the series, strict about exactly one thing, and his students learn the priority quickly: missions can fail, rules can break, but comrades are not left behind.^[9] The laziness, the mask and the jokes sit on top of one of the saddest backstories in the story, which is precisely why the series trusts him with its children.

• Naruto Uzumaki
• Sasuke Uchiha
• Sakura Haruno
• Sharingan
• Shadow Clone Technique
• Minato Namikaze
• Village Hidden in the Leaves

1. Naruto, chapter 4 (Shueisha, Weekly Shōnen Jump, 1999).
2. "Pass or Fail: Survival Test." NARUTO OFFICIAL SITE (official). naruto-official.com/en/anime/naruto1/list/01_228. Retrieved July 2026.
3. Naruto, episode 4 on-screen cast credits (Studio Pierrot / TV Tokyo, 2002).
4. Naruto, episode 4: "Pass or Fail: Survival Test" English-language broadcast credits (VIZ Media, 2005).
5. Naruto: Hiden — Rin no Sho, Character Official Data Book (Shueisha, 2002).
6. Naruto: Kakashi's Story — The Sixth Hokage and the Failed Prince (Shueisha / VIZ Media). viz.com. Retrieved July 2026.
7. "Boruto: Naruto Next Generations." VIZ Media (official). viz.com/boruto. Retrieved July 2026.
8. Naruto, vols. 2–3 (Shueisha / VIZ Media).
9. Naruto, vols. 1–2 (Shueisha / VIZ Media).
10. Naruto, vol. 27 (Shueisha / VIZ Media).
11. Naruto, chapter 315: "Special Training!!" (Shueisha, 2006).
12. Naruto, vol. 46 (Shueisha / VIZ Media). viz.com. Retrieved July 2026.
13. Naruto, vol. 48 (Shueisha / VIZ Media).
14. Naruto, vol. 63 (Shueisha / VIZ Media).