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 traveling in the Far
East.
Depending on the version of the story, this prompted Kato to become
Reid's assistant or friend. In the anthology The Green Hornet
Chronicles from Moonstone
Books,
author Richard
Dean Starr's
story "Nothing Gold Can Stay: An Origin Story of Kato"
explores the character's background and how he ends up living in
America, suggesting that Kato met Britt Reid on a later trip back to
his homeland while in search of his mother.
Radio
program and Nationality
In
the 1936 premiere of the radio program, Kato was presented as
being Japanese.
By 1939, the invasion
of China by
the Empire
of Japan made
this bad public relations, and Kato was referred to simply as
"Oriental".[citation
needed] The
first of Universal's
two movie serials, produced in 1939 but not released to theaters
until early 1940, referred in passing to Kato being "a Korean".
By 1941, Kato had begun to be referred to as Filipino. A
long-standing, but false, urban legend maintained that the switch
from one to the other occurred immediately after the 1941 bombing
of Pearl
Harbor.
In recent years, there has been a growing but equally erroneous
belief that Kato was initially said to be a Filipino of Japanese
ancestry.[citation
needed]
In
the movie The
Green Hornet (2011) the
character Kato (played by Jay Chou) told Britt Reid that he was born
in the city of Shanghai (China).
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,
which was implied in the first film serial with his use of a
tranquilizing "chop" to
the back of a thug's neck.
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 this version, he also used green sleeve darts as a
ranged attack for situations in which hand-to-hand combat was either
impossible or too risky. In a crossover 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 in1989 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 crime-fighting, 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 theHornet 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."
In
the Kevin
Smith's
2010 revamp of the continuity, Kato is depicted, in modern times, as
the elderly but still physically fit valet of the late Britt Reid,
killed by a yakuza mobster going by the Black
Hornet sobriquet.
The elder Kato, in this version a Japanese forced to act Filipino to
avoid the suspicions and the racist charges against his people during
WWII, retires his identity along with Britt Reid, and both men decide
to devote themselves to their families, respectively raising their
offspring Britt Reid Jr. and Mulan Kato.
After
Britt Reid's death, Kato returns in America with Mulan, now the
second Kato, to act out the Secret
Testament of
Britt Reid Sr., who wished, in the event of his death, Kato to
destroy every Green Hornet paraphernalia still in his possession and
whisk Britt Reid Jr. to Japan, for his safety. However both offspring
refuse Reid's and Kato's will: Mulan Kato, now clad in a close
variation of her father's original outfit, storms off to confront the
Yakuza, and Britt Reid Jr. manages to steal one of the Green Hornet
costumes to help her, despite having little training on his own.
As
the new Kato, Mulan is a strong, physically fit, silent warrior
woman, able to perform amazing feats with uncanny strength and
precision. Despite having been shown, in her late teens, as a
peppy, lively, cheery social
butterfly, the
adult Mulan Kato is a darker, brooding character who never speaks
(despite physically able to do so, Mulan prefers speaking as little
as she can to prevent the much talkative Britt Reid Jr., and
seemingly everyone else, from talking back )
and shows little, if no interest at all, for any form of
socialization, a thing that seems to distress the second Green
Hornet, every bit the suave socialite his father was.
In
addition, the limited series Green
Hornet: Parallel Lives by
writer Jai Nitz, will serve as a prequel to the 2011
Green Hornet film,
exploring the backstory for the film's version of Kato.
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[citation
needed].
Feature
films
Black
Mask is
a 1996 Hong
Kong action
film starring Jet
Li.
In the film, in homage to The
Green Hornet,
Black Mask wears a domino mask and chauffeur's cap in the same style
as Kato from the series. The Black Mask is even compared to Kato in a
news reporter scene.
In
the film Legend
of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen,
released on late September in Asia and early 2011 in the United
States, there is a feature of the Green Hornet. The subplot consist
of the main character Chen
Zhen (played
by Donnie
Yen),
dressing up as a masked vigilante (based on Kato) to stop Japanese
assassinations and to protect the people in 1930s Shanghai.
The
director has mentioned that since the roles of both Chen Zhen and
Kato had been played by Bruce Lee, the film was a tribute and
dedication to Bruce Lee.
On
June 4, 2008 Sony Pictures announced plans that they are proceeding
with plans for a feature film of the superhero. Set to be released on
January 14, 2011, 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 has
replaced Chow as Kato for the film. In this version, Kato was
originally employed by Britt Reid's father James as a car mechanic-
also making his coffee with a specially-designed machine he had
created for the purpose-, joining Britt on the steps that lead to him
becoming the Green Hornet as Britt concluded that they had both been
wasting their potential. Kato's martial art skills in this version of
the series are so exceptional that he claims that time literally
slows down for him when he gets an adrenaline rush in a dangerous
situation, as well as his traditional role as mechanic and driver.
Although he and Britt have a temporary falling-out when they argue
over their respective importance to the 'Green Hornet' concept, they
patch up their differences in time to destroy the gang of crime lord
Chudnofsky.
©
Wikipedia
