Kato (The Green Hornet)

Kato
Kato, as portrayed by Bruce Lee.
Publication information
First appearance	American old-time radio, 1930s
Created by	Fran Striker
In-story information
Partnerships	The Green Hornet
Abilities	Master martial artist Automotive engineering expert

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 and Paul Carnegie.Keye Luke took the role in the movie serials, and in the television series he was portrayed by Bruce Lee. Jay Chou played Kato in the 2011 Green Hornet film.

Kato was Britt Reid's valet, who doubled as The Green Hornet's unnamed, masked driver and partner 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.

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 for public relations, and from that year until 1945 "Britt Reid's Japanese valet" in the show's opening was then simply identified by the announcer as his "faithful valet." 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.