Chris Otomo Tate

Tate keeps his blonde hair neatly parted down the center and combed into place, framing a pair of blue eyes. His public wardrobe is formal and understated: a black suit, a matching tie, and dress shoes.

Tate is a pragmatist to the core, willing to spend his own reputation or even put himself at risk when it buys leverage against a larger danger. Though critics paint him as a foreign puppet, he holds a sincere commitment to his adopted country and to guiding its people through crisis. His years in the U.S. State Department left him with a genuine love of Japanese culture, the same devotion that eventually made the country his home.

Tate's path began in the American foreign service, with a posting at the United States embassy in Japan that lasted until he turned thirty. The assignment gave him a lasting fondness for the country, and rather than head home he stayed on and launched a micromachine venture. A pair of patents turned the firm into a success and drew the notice of Sachio Otomo, a heavyweight in the Japanese Diet who led the influential Otomo Group. Tate sold his company to the group, which folded it into a subsidiary called Otomo Micron, and walked away with a sizable profit. Through those dealings he grew close to Sachio's daughter Akiko, married her, and secured Japanese citizenship in the process.

Citizenship opened the door to politics. Tate won a seat in the Diet and within a few years rose to become prime minister in place of Yoko Kayabuki. Gossip credited his climb to the pull of his kingmaker father-in-law, but Daisuke Aramaki reckoned that a real majority of the public stood behind him, drawn to the idea that only a genuine outsider could see and confront the nation's troubles.

Barely a month into his term in 2045, Tate quietly instructed Aramaki to revive the shuttered Public Security Section 9, tasking it with the post-human investigation alongside the American Empire's National Security Agency. To outsiders the move looked like proof that an American-born leader would serve as a puppet, yet Tate's aim was to shield his adopted homeland as it reeled from the Synchronized Global Default. Offered American help meant to win his loyalty, he instead reached for Section 9 after studying their classified file from the Interior Ministry. In the second season, once the Empire's hand in AI Code 1A84 and its conversion of cyberbrained citizens into post-humans comes to light, Tate severs his allegiance and stops acting on the Empire's behalf.