Technology in the Narutoverse

Power lines and trains, but no guns. Computers and fancy radio headsets but no heavy industry. Rubber, chocolate and coffee but no hint of long-distance trade. What the heck is going on here?

Well, the real reason the tech in Naruto makes no sense is that Kishimoto just throws in whatever looks cool or helps the plot along, without even pretending to try to make it consistent. But my stories focus too much on realism and internal consistency for that, so I'll just have to come up with some semi-plausible explanation.

Unfortuantely the standard post-apocalyptic scenario is totally unworkable. There are dozens of episodes where we see computers, headset radios and other devices that simply can't be manufactured without a full-blown 20th-century industrial civilization, and are too delicate to still be working more than a few decades after a general collapse. At the same time guns - one of the most rugged, useful and easily maintained examples of modern technology - are completely nonexistent.

Explanations that involve a limited development of technology fall prey to the same problem - strictly regulated cottage industries could provide small-scale electricity or a few steam-powered railroads, but not any kind of modern-looking electronics. You just can't build a fab without tens of billions of dollars worth of other industry.

So after much thought, I've decided to go with an idea Perfect Lionheart came up with a while back: they summon it. Specifically, the Elemental Countries have a little bit of small-scale industry, strictly regulated by their feudal lords, but the really advanced stuff is all summoned from other worlds. This makes summoned tech rare and expensive, since summoners aren't common and their control over what they summon isn't especially precise, but it also means you could run into a single example of just about anything.

This works pretty well both for explaining Kishimoto's crazy tech and for supporting interesting plot ideas. Guns are unheard of because the summoners are mostly ninja who aren't interested in undermining their own way of life, and the things are mostly only good for letting ordinary people kill genin (let's face it, anyone who can survive being blown through a concrete wall isn't going to be fazed by bullets either). Cars and planes are too big to easily summon, and aren't worth much without a lot of local industry that doesn't exist. But there's a lot of advanced engineering knowledge available studying from summoned books and machines, so anyone with money to burn can fund impressive one-off engineering projects

No, it isn't perfect. But it'll work well enough to hang a story on.