👹 Saburo Arasaka
“A tower can be rebuilt. The soul can’t be repaired so easily.”
📋 Quick Reference
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Role | CEO & Patriarch of Arasaka Corporation |
| Status | Alive — over 150 years old in the 2040s |
| Location | Japan (Arasaka zaibatsu headquarters) |
| Known For | Building Arasaka into a global megacorporation; surviving over a century of corporate warfare |
📝 Overview
Saburo Arasaka stepped up as CEO of Arasaka in 1960, and he is still in charge over a hundred years later. That fact alone says everything about the man and his corporation. Under Saburo’s hand, Arasaka grew from a Japanese manufacturing company into one of the most powerful megacorporations in history — a private empire with a million employees, armies of corporate soldiers, and fingers in every continent’s affairs.
Even as a centenarian, Saburo has not lost his ability to plan strategically, or to inspire both loyalty and utter terror in his subordinates. He rules Arasaka nominally from Japan, though the real power dynamics within the corporation are complicated by three rival factions led by his surviving children and granddaughter.
👨👧👦 The Arasaka Family
Saburo’s family is the corporation, and the corporation is the family:
| Member | Relation | Faction | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kei Arasaka | Eldest son | — | Killed in the Arasaka Tower nuke (2023) |
| Hanako Arasaka | Eldest daughter | Kiji 雉 (Green Pheasant) | Alive — Saburo’s loyal heir |
| Yorinobu Arasaka | Second son | Taka 鷹 (Hawk) | Alive — renegade, opposes Saburo |
| Michiko Sanderson | Granddaughter (via Kei) | Hato 鳩 (Dove) | Alive — U.S. citizen, allied with NUSA |
The loss of Kei — his only truly loyal son — in the Night City nuke was devastating for Saburo. A tower can be rebuilt. He couldn’t buy another Kei.
📜 Key Events
The Reliquary Database (2022)
When the DataKrash virus began destroying the global NET (infesting 78.2% of all data), Saburo ordered the creation of a secure database of uninfected knowledge housed in the new Arasaka Towers facility in Night City — the Reliquary Database Project. This was paired with the Soulkiller program, kept in a lab on floor 120.
The 4th Corporate War & The Night City Nuke (2023)
The war between Arasaka and Militech devastated Night City. When the Towers fell to a tactical nuclear detonation on August 20, 2023, the Reliquary was destroyed and Kei was killed. After the blast, President Kress painted Saburo as “an evil foreign Megacorp run by a madman who wantonly destroyed an American city in the pursuit of personal power.”
Arasaka was expelled from the NUSA, forced to pull almost all operations back to Japan. But Saburo was far from finished.
The Factional Split (2026–2045)
With Kei dead, control fractured into three factions jockeying for position while “Old Man Saburo” held nominal power. The three factions — Hanako’s Kiji, Yorinobu’s Taka, and Michiko’s Hato — represent fundamentally different visions for Arasaka’s future.
🔗 Related Topics
- Arasaka — The corporation he built
- Hanako Arasaka — His loyal daughter
- Yorinobu Arasaka — His renegade son
- Adam Smasher — His personal enforcer
- Arasaka Tower — Site of the Reliquary and the nuke
(Sources: CRB pp.239, 267, 291–293; EMK Edgerunners Handbook; Interface RED Vol. 4)