Character Profile: Third Hokage

The Third Hokage is the Hidden Leaf village chieftain. He would probably have retired as Hokage (highest ninja position) of the village twelve years ago had the Fourth Hokage not sacrificed himself in order to seal the Demon Fox. He's now quite old, and he mostly does administrative jobs like running the academy, assigning missions to the ninja teams, and other such tasks.

The Third Hokage is the one who recognized and explained to Iruka about Naruto's behavior, that it was an affirmation from the village that Naruto was alive, that he existed, and that he can be a contributor to the village.

The Third Hokage was killed while using a forbidden jutsu called Sealing Jutsu Shikifuhin Reaper Death Seal in an attempt to kill Orochimaru in episodes 79-80. Although he failed, he did take away the use of Orochimaru's arms so that he may never perform a ninjustu ever again.

The hand signs for this jutsu are snake, boar, sheep, rabbit, dog, rat, bird, horse, snake. It was also used by the fourth Hokage, and we know because page 91 of the 14th manga volume shows "So this is the God of Death that the Fourth Hokage was saying only the caster of the jutsu can see." The God of Death is pictured as a white haired person with horns, a knife in his mouth, beads, and a faceless person. The way the Jutsu works is that the God of Death takes the beads in its right hand and wraps them around his arm (similar to Miroku from Inuyasha). Marks appear on that hand as the arm goes into the person that performed the jutsu. Next, the caster needs to grab the person, so the hand grabs onto the person and pulls the soul out of the body.

Orochimaru later figured out that this jutsu was used to seal the nine tailed fox. Unfortunately, as Sarutobi (who later gets a sword pierced through him) explains to Orochimaru, "The caster must hand over their soul to the God of Death for the Jutsu to work. It's a sealing Jutsu. It requires the complete sacrifice of ones life." He also says that the souls wouldn't rest in peace, but suffer in the belly of the God of Death. This part scares Orochimaru a bit because when he sees the God of Death, he witness it taking the knife out of its mouth, slicing two of the four souls, and eating the two that it cut.

Orochimaru, Jiraiya, and Tsunade were the Third Hokage's students.