Hidan: The immortal who only enjoys pain when someone else dies with him

Outside a bounty station hidden in a public restroom in the Land of Fire, a man with gray hair and a black cloak with red clouds licks the blood off his three-bladed scythe. It belongs to Asuma Sarutobi, a Leaf jōnin whose cheek he has just cut. On the ground lies his god’s symbol, a circle with a triangle inside that he drew earlier in his own blood, and he plants himself in the middle. His skin turns black, crossed by white lines that trace a skeleton. Asuma engulfs him in fire, and the burns appear on Asuma. Then the man drives a spike into his own leg, and it is Asuma who collapses, while he explains, in ecstasy, that nothing beats feeling the other’s agony run through his body. This is Hidan, in chapters 323 and 324 of Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto manga (episodes 77 and 78 of Naruto Shippuden): an S-rank rogue ninja who deserted Yugakure, the hot springs village, a member of Akatsuki, Kakuzu’s partner and a follower of Jashin, a cult that commands killing. Experimenting with its secret techniques has made him immortal.

// The theoryA body that needs danger to feel

(Warning: this case file tells how Hidan kills Asuma and how he ends.) Hidan is Akatsuki’s simplest villain: no plan to change the world, no tragic past, just a desire to kill and a god who thanks him for it. Hypoarousal theory is the tool for reading him. It begins with Hans Eysenck, who in Crime and Personality (1964) proposed that some people have a chronically under-aroused nervous system and need more stimulation than others to feel good. Marvin Zuckerman measured that need with his sensation seeking scale (1979), and Adrian Raine, in The Psychopathology of Crime (1993), placed low resting heart rate among the best biological predictors of antisocial behavior, which Portnoy and Farrington’s meta-analysis (2015) confirmed. There are two routes that can add up: someone who lives switched off seeks strong doses of stimulation, and someone who is barely alarmed fears punishment and harm less. In a cohort of children in Mauritius, those who at age 3 barely learned to anticipate an unpleasant stimulus showed up more often in a criminal register at 23 (Gao and colleagues, 2010). It is a risk factor, not a destiny.

// The subjectThe missionary of slaughter

Three moments portray him. In his introduction, Hidan and Kakuzu corner Yugito Nii, the Two-Tails’ jinchūriki, in the sewers of the Cloud; he offers her the chance to surrender because his faith does not allow him to leave an opponent half dead, as the capture requires, and before fighting he prays to Jashin with his pendant (chapters 312 and 313; episode 72). At the Fire Temple, where they kill the monk Chiriku to collect his bounty, Hidan objects that attacking a temple for money is blasphemous, and explains that his god counts anything short of total destruction as a sin (chapter 314; episode 73). The third is Asuma. Shikamaru works out that the link only works inside the circle, drags him out of it with his shadow, and Asuma cuts off his head, which goes on cursing everyone from the ground (chapters 324 and 325; episode 78). Kakuzu sews it back on, Hidan steps back into the circle and drives a spike through his own heart (chapter 326; episode 79). Asuma says goodbye to his students, asks for one last cigarette and dies (chapter 328; episode 80).

Shikamaru Nara’s revenge comes to a head in chapters 335 to 339 (episodes 85 to 88). He separates Hidan from Kakuzu and drags him with his shadow into a forest strung with explosive tags. Hidan thinks he has tasted Shikamaru’s blood, repeats the ritual and runs himself through the chest, but the blood was Kakuzu’s: he has just destroyed one of his partner’s hearts (chapters 336 and 337; episodes 85 and 86). Shikamaru pins him down, sticks the tags to his body, opens a pit prepared in advance beneath his feet and tells him the forest belongs to his clan. Hidan swears that even if he is left with nothing but his head, he will escape and tear out Shikamaru’s throat with his teeth. Shikamaru sets off the tags (in the anime, by throwing Asuma’s lighter at him), and the remains fall into the pit, which is buried with him alive inside (chapters 338 and 339; episodes 87 and 88).

// The crackPain he only likes when it is shared

The theory explains the hunger for stimulation, not what someone chooses to feed it with, and what Hidan chooses is not pain as such. When Izumo and Kotetsu run him through with two kunai, he barely reacts: he only asks who they are (chapter 322). Damage he does not share does not seem to amuse him; what sends him into ecstasy is feeling another person’s agony as they die. That is no longer a dulled body looking for more volume: it is sadism, wrapped in a doctrine that turns slaughter into religious duty. Neither a slow pulse nor sensation seeking invents a god who demands blood. That part is learned, adopted and chosen, and it is what makes Hidan a killer. Explaining is not excusing.

The second crack is opened by Shikamaru. If fearlessness removes brakes, threats stop working: you cannot deter someone with death if he cannot die. Shikamaru does not try to scare him. He studies him, works out the rules of the circle and the blood, and applies the only penalty that reaches an immortal: incapacitation, a pit in a closed forest. And one detail: what really stops him is not a wound but losing control of his own body, as when Shikamaru’s shadow forces him to charge at his own partner with his scythe (episode 83).