Kato is a fictional character from
The Green Hornet series. This
character has also appeared with the Green Hornet in
film,
television, book and
comic book versions. Kato was the
Hornet's assistant and has been played by a number of actors. On
radio, Kato was initially played by Raymond Hayashi, then Roland
Parker who had the role for most of the run, and in the later years
Mickey Tolan.
Keye Luke took the role in
the movie serials, and in the television series he was portrayed by
Bruce Lee.
Character history
Kato was Britt Reid's valet, who doubled as The Green Hornet's
unnamed,
masked driver and sidekick to help him
in his vigilante adventures, disguised as the activities of a
racketeer and his chauffeur/
bodyguard/enforcer. According to the storyline,
years before the events depicted in the series, Britt Reid had
saved Kato's life while travelling in the
Far
East. Depending on the version of the story, this prompted Kato
to become Reid's assistant or friend.
Radio program
Upon the 1936 premiere of the radio program, Kato was presented as
being
Japanese.
The invasion of China by the Empire of Japan
, soon made this bad public relations, and there was
no specification of ethnicity for the character for about two
years. In 1941,
Filipino
began being used.
A long-standing urban legend maintained that
the switch from one to the other occurred immediately after the
1941 bombing of Pearl
Harbor
, but this is simply not so. In recent years,
there has been a growing but equally erroneous belief that Kato was
initially said to be a Filipino of Japanese ancestry. The fact is
that he was first said to be Japanese, then by 1939 nothing more
specific than "Oriental," and beginning in 1941
Filipino.
A side note to this subject is the fact
that the first of Universal's two
movie serials, produced in 1939 but not released to theaters until
early 1940, had a passing reference in the opening chapter that
Kato was "a Korean" (the same dialogue
exchange also specified the location of Reid's saving the other's
life as Singapore
).
Kato was a skilled driver, mechanic and fighter in all versions of
the story, with the creations of both the special automobile, the
Black Beauty, and the Hornet's trademark sleeping gas and the gun
that delivered it attributed to him. In the television series he
also became an expert in
martial
arts.
Television series
It was due
in part to Bruce Lee's portrayal of this character that martial
arts became popular in the United States
in the 1960s. In addition, this version also
had him using green sleeve darts to give him a ranged attack he can
use to counter enemies with guns long enough to close in to fight
hand to hand. In a cross over episode of
Batman from the same time and
companies, Kato had a battle with
Robin that ended in a draw (the same thing
happened simultaneously with their senior partners). The impression
Lee made at the time is demonstrated by one of the TV series tie-in
coloring books produced by "Watkins & Strathmore." It is
titled,
Kato's Revenge Featuring the Green Hornet.
The
Green Hornet's success in Hong Kong
, where it was popularly known as The Kato
Show, led to Lee starring in the feature films that would make him a pop culture
icon.
Comic book adaptations
All
Green Hornet comic book
adaptations have included Kato. These were produced by Helnit
(sometimes known as
Holyoke),
Harvey,
Dell and, tied in to the television version,
Gold Key. Beginning in
1989 one, published by
NOW Comics, established a continuity between the
different versions of the story. In this comic, the TV/Bruce Lee
version of Kato was the son of the Kato from the radio stories, and
had the given name Hayashi as an homage to the character's first
radio actor. The comic also established a new Kato, a much younger
half-sister of the television-based character, Mishi. This female
Kato also insisted on being treated as the Hornet's full partner
rather than a sidekick. However, the Green Hornet, Inc., soon
withdrew approval and this character was replaced with the 60s
version after Vol. 1, #10. Her removal was explained by having the
Kato family company, Nippon Today, needing her automotive designing
services at its Zurich, Switzerland facility. Mishi would return in
Volume 2, appearing sporadically in the new costumed identity of
the Crimson Wasp, on a vendetta against the criminal, Johnny
Dollar. She eventually revealed (in
The Green Hornet Vol.
2, #s 12 & 13, August & September 1992) that he had been an
embezzling executive at the Swiss plant, whose actions she
unwittingly began to expose. Consequently, he had murdered her
fiancé and his daughter in an attack that also caused the
unknowingly pregnant Mishi, the main target, to miscarry. In the
#34, July 1994 issue of that run, she appeared in her "Hornet's
partner" guise one additional time, as the masked Paul Reid
attended a gangland meeting; the rules stated that each "boss" was
allowed two "boys." During this period, Hayashi became romantically
involved with District Attorney Diana Reid, daughter of the
original Hornet, who even thought for a while that she had
conceived his child. In the final issue, Diana discussed their
wedding plans with Mishi. In the last two issues, yet another Kato,
a nephew to both of these named Kono, was brought in to allow the
aging Hayashi to retire from crimefighting, but the publisher's
ceasing of operations prevented much of him being seen. The Bruce
Lee-based Kato was also featured in two of his own spin-off
miniseries, written by
Mike Baron. The
first had him defending a Chinese temple, where he had studied
kung fu, from the Communist government,
while in the second he took the job of bodyguarding a
heroin-addicted rock star. A third solo adventure, also by Baron,
was announced and promoted first as another miniseries, then as a
graphic novel (now subtitled "Dragons in Eden"), but was left
unpublished when NOW folded. The line featured one other version of
the character. The three-issue mini-series
The Green Hornet:
Dark Tomorrow (June–August 1993) was set approximately one
hundred years in the future, and had an Asian-American Green
Hornet, real name Clayton Reid, who had been corrupted by power and
truly became the crime boss he was supposed to only pretend to be,
fighting a Caucasian Kato. Beyond the reversal of ethnicities, the
latter added the claim that he and the future Hornet were cousins,
and the art's depiction of this Hornet's unnamed paternal
grandparents resembles Paul Reid and Mishi Kato. Although the
future Kato is not further identified here, a later "Reid/Kato
Family Trees" feature (in
The Green Hornet, Vol. 2, # 26,
October 1993) gave him the first name Luke.
This comic book incarnation gave a degree of official status to a
long-standing error about the character, that in his
masked identity he is known as Kato. The name was
restricted to his private persona in the original radio series, the
two movie serials, and most of the television version (there were
two slips in this last medium, one on the
Batman appearance, the other in the
last filmed episode of the
Hornet series itself, "Invasion
from Outer Space, Part 2"; this story is well out of sync with the
rest of the run, and the writer, director, and even the line
producer are people with no other credits on the program). But the
NOW comic version made a big point of having the masked assistants
called Kato, with the woman at one early point telling the equally
new Hornet during their first adventure, "While I'm in this funky
get-up, call me Kato. It's part of the tradition."
Films
A 1994
Hong
Kong film, Qing feng xia, starred Kar Lok Chin as a Kato-like masked hero called
the Green Hornet (in English subtitles). In one scene, he is
reminded of his predecessors, one of whom is represented by a
picture of Bruce Lee in his TV Kato costume.
Many consider Bruce Lee's portrayal of the character the chief
reason why
The Green Hornet is still considered a viable
property. To that end, proposed feature film adaptations typically
make the casting of some major
martial
arts film star as Kato the top priority for such a project.
Jason Scott Lee, who portrayed Bruce
in a
1993 biographical
film, and
Jet Li have been announced as
set to play him in proposed but abandoned films.
On June 4, 2008 Sony Pictures announced plans that they are going
ahead with plans for a feature film of the superhero. Set to be
released on December 17, 2010, the film is to star
Seth Rogen, who will take on writing duties along
with
Superbad co-writer
Evan Goldberg.
Stephen Chow had originally signed on to play
Kato, but then dropped out.Taiwanese actor
Jay
Chou replaced Chow as Kato for the film.
References and allusions
- The character Cato
Fong in the Pink
Panther series of films was based on the Green Hornet Kato
character.
References
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