Hanako Arasaka

Hanako Arasaka (荒坂 華子) is the third child and only daughter to Saburo. Hanako is a skilled netrunner and the head of the Kiji (雉) Faction of the Arasaka Corporation. She is loved by many people and often described as sweet and beautiful in the eyes of many Arasaka employees. Hanako is an intelligent woman who didn't agree with her father's ambitions and had her own agenda she planned to follow. Despite knowing what her father's wishes entailed with her, she still loved and didn't want to displease him.

Her relationship with her brother Yorinobu is one of great importance to her. Through her strong and calm demeanor Hanako is able to command and lead with great pride for her work. Hanako became the figurehead and CEO of the Corporation. Although her digital projects were what drove her, Hanako was the only one who understood Alt's work with the Soulkiller.

1999-2020
Hanako Arasaka is Saburo Arasaka's youngest child, conceived when he was eighty, and the apple of his eye. Hanako was born to Saburo's third and last wife, Michiko, who died shortly thereafter due to complications caused by the birth in March 2, 1999.

Saburo was charmed by his little daughter's stunning beauty, and he decided to raise her in the sheltered confines of the Arasaka Family Compound to protect her from the scarring traumas of life in the exterior world. Hanako received her schooling at the compound through trusted tutors. Although she is a grown woman now, Hanako still only leaves the compound about once a month, and then only under heavy escort. Cut off from the outside world, she learned how to travel and explore the Net instead. Saburo made sure that Hanako was never made aware of the darker side of the corporation, but, through her Net explorations, Hanako was just beginning to suspect the horrible truth.

While Hanako would not leave the compound, the few times she would leave to see Tokyo she was escorted by Shintaro Takayama, the chief of security of the compound, or Katsuo Iwashima, the second in command. Shintaro was like a second father to her and she trusted him more than most. Hanako was also delighted with his stories of ancient Japan he would tell her while she was growing up. Katsuo would escort her when Shintaro was not available and her relationship with him was a pleasant one.

Hanako was a sweet and intelligent woman. She had been chafing under her father's well meaning restraint for several years, but she had never voiced her complaints. She knew that her father wanted to arrange her marriage in order to solidify a corporate alliance, but she secretly dreaded the day it would happen. Hanako never wished to hurt her father, but she had sworn to live an independent life after he died. Hanako's relationship with her older half-brother Kei was strained. While Kei adored Hanako and would do anything for her, she found him cold and threatening and never fully trusting him.

Her closest family member was Yorinobu, her older rebellious brother of the same mother. Hanako and Yorinobu would regularly meet in the Net while he rode with the Steel Dragons.

2022 - 2023
Hanako was not directly involved in the Fourth Corporate War; she was kept under strict protection. During these years, Hanako spent most of her time in Ōsaka. After the war ended, she attended the funeral of her eldest brother Kei, who had become a casualty of the fighting.

Hanako and her father were surprised when Yorinobu used the funeral as an opportunity to ask for forgiveness. Thanks to her support, Yorinobu was accepted back into the family's fold.

2045
A highly skilled Netrunner, Hanako was of one few who grasped the true meaning of Alt Cunningham's work. Having always been reclusive, she preferred to work on her digital projects, particularly on a revised version of Soulkiller with the aim of transferring engrams into clone bodies. However, after the death of Kei, the remainder of the Old Guard unified around her, forming the Kiji (雉) Faction. A group of conservative technocrats, they wanted to continue Saburo and Kei's plans, yet hoping for a peaceful reconciliation with the NUSA. While Hanako was the faction's figurehead, the degree of her involvement remains unclear.

At some point before 2070, Hanako opened a preserve on the island of Shikoku for the faction's name-giving animal, the last Japanese green pheasants (キジ).

2077
Together with her bodyguard Sandayu Oda, Hanako accompanied her father Saburo on his trip on the aircraft carrier Kujira from Japan to Night City, where he wanted to confront Yorinobu for stealing his personal commission — the Relic — from the lab. Concerned for him, she offered to accompany Saburo or speak to her brother herself, but the CEO declined both requests. On her question what he planned to do, he could not give her a good answer; however, he let himself be discouraged from annihilating Night City to avoid the talk.

After Saburo's apparent murder by poison, Hanako agreed with her brother Yorinobu to give a eulogy at the dashi float parade in Japantown during Aratama-matsuri festival. Shortly after her speech, Hanako was confronted by his former bodyguard Goro Takemura, who wanted to tell her about Yorinobu's involvement. When she wouldn't listen, he abducted her to an abandoned apartment building in Vista del Rey, where he attempted to reason with her. Hanako refused this along with the offered tea. Only the merc V, Takemura's ally and eyewitness to Saburo's death, was able to tell Hanako the truth: that her father had been killed by her brother.

However, at that point of the conversation, Arasaka soldiers led by Adam Smasher burst into the building, securing Hanako and destroying the floor in the process.

Upon returning to the Arasaka compound, Hanako sent a proxy to speak with V, who had gone into hiding in the Sunset Motel in the aftermath of the parade. Having mistaken the rescue for an attempt at her life, she agreed to work together. Claiming that her hands were tied, she tasked the merc with acquiring a copy of Soulkiller, then contact her on her private line.


 * V's question after the bodyguard's whereabouts is answered with a claim that he was in a secure location, which was all that they needed to know at this time.


 * If V scorns her for being responsible for Takemura's death by not listening earlier, she rebukes them, reminding them that he had done everything for this conversation to happen, which demanded respect.

Once the merc had acquired the necessary software, she summoned them to the luxury restaurant Embers. When they arrived, Hanako explained the situation: from the start, the story of Saburo's poisoning had been disbelieved, yet no one (herself included) had been willing to stand against Yorinobu. She revealed she loved her brother too much to oppose him until she realized that he had tried to kill her. At this point, Hanako offered to save V's life in return for their testimony in front of Arasaka's board of directors. The conversation ended somewhat abruptly when she was called back to the Arasaka Estate in Westbrook.


 * Yorinobu Arasaka confirmed that Hanako was among the victims from when Alt took control of Arasaka Tower, vowing to find those responsible for her death.


 * Yorinobu returned to the Tokyo headquarters to grieve his sister, who had become a casualty to the internal struggle along with the rest of the Arasaka board.


 * Directly after the conversation with V, Hanako had been escorted to Arasaka Estate by her brother's soldiers, ostensibly for her own safety. She sent Anders Hellman and (if he survived Search and Destroy) Goro Takemura to rendezvous with V and extract her. Her initial orders are limited to neutralizing the four Arasaka elite soldiers guarding the main complex. The operation took place without her support aside from a tactical briefing.
 * After extraction, the group took off in an AV for Arasaka Tower, where Hanako led the mercenary to her father's office. On the way, she shared her improvised plan to confront the Board of Directors before taking the mercenary to the Mikoshi access point below Night City by means of a secret elevator. There, she revealed Saburo Arasaka's engram; a brief conversation ensued until he informed her that he was ready.
 * Together with Takemura (if alive), Oda (if alive), V and and three soldiers, she informed the board of Yorinobu's disposal as CEO of Arasaka and accused him of murdering their father. Her and V's testimony was initially dismissed, but gained instant credibility when backed by Saburo's engram. Immediately after she asserted control over the company's leadership, the facility went into lockdown as Taka soldiers arrived to dispose of the board of directors. Only thanks to V's presence did she and Michiko Arasaka survive the attempted assassination, after which she sent the mercenary to detain her brother, explicitly stating that if he was killed, their deal would be void.
 * V arrived in the CEO's rooms to find a broken man who offered no resistance, taking away the gun with which he had not killed himself. During the wait, he shared his motivation: to finish what Johnny Silverhand had started, destroying Arasaka from the inside. Led by Anders Hellman from where Hanako was cradling her brother, the mercenary was one of the last people to see Yorinobu alive before his consciousness was overwritten by Saburo's engram. Despite global protests and unrest, the CEO proceeded to live in his son's body, reverting any change of policy that he had implemented.

Associated Quests

 * Playing for Time (seen on the TV)
 * Play It Safe
 * Search and Destroy
 * Nocturne Op55N1
 * Last Caress
 * Totalimmortal

Trivia

 * Hanako's identity in a trailer was confirmed by CD Projekt RED's Senior Quest Designer, Philipp Weber.
 * Her name in Kanji appears to be 荒坂 華子, according to a post by a Japanese CDPR forum moderator. However, as game subtitles are displaying all Japanese names in katakana, she is spelled as ハナコ.


 * In the Arasaka ending, V refers to Yorinobu Arasaka as Hanako's baby brother. This is either an oversight or a mistake on V's part, as Hanako is the youngest of Saburo Arasaka's children. Hanako also regularly addresses Yorinobu as her older brother in Japanese (niisan).
 * During a developer stream, it was confirmed that Yorinobu never intended Hanako's death.