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Kato is a fictional character from The Green Hornet radio program. This character has also appeared with the Green Hornet in film, television, book and comic book versions. Kato was the Hornet's sidekick 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 it was handled by Bruce Lee.

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.

Upon the 1936 premiere of the radio program, Kato was presented as being Japanese. The actions of Tojo, et al., soon made this bad public relations, and there was no specification of ethnicity for the character for several years, with Filipino eventually 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 1940 nothing more specific than "Oriental," and eventually 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, fighter and mechanic 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. 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 Green Hornet's popularity 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.

Beginning in 1989 a comic book adaptation of The Green Hornet published by NOW Comics, established a continuity between the different versions of the story. In the 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 sister of the television character. 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. In the last two issues, yet another Kato, nephew to both of these, was brought in, 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.

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 (Vol. 1, #7) telling the equally new Hornet during their first adventure, "It's traditional."

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.

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)[1]. 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.

In the Black Mask action film series, the title character typically strongly resembles Kato in costume.

The theme song of The Green Hornet was featured in Kill Bill Vol. 1, while the Crazy 88, O-Ren Ishii's personal army, wore black Kato masks.

American actor Brian "Kato" Kaelin was nicknamed for Bruce Lee's character.

The character Cato Fong in the Pink Panther series of films was based on the Green Hornet Kato character.