- "Seventy Suffering Samurais!"
- —Mitsuhirato[src]
Mitsuhirato is a sadistic Japanese double agent who appears in The Blue Lotus as an antagonist who impedes Tintin. After being defeated and arrested, he commits suicide.
History
Mitsuhirato owned a women's clothing shop on Tai P'ing Lu street, Shanghai, but was also involved in a drug trafficking ring with Roberto Rastapopoulos and the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood while also working as a spy for the Japanese government. Mitsuhirato is, along with the other Japanese principal characters, is characterized as an evil, scheming person, exploiting political turmoil in China to his and his country's advantage. He is depicted as being the mastermind of the Mudken Incident that sparked the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and an escalation in the state of undeclared war between Japan and the Nationalist Government of China. After his subsequent capture at the end of The Blue Lotus, he is described in a news cutting as having committed suicide by hara-kiri.
Name
Mitsuhira (光平) is a reasonably common Japanese given-name (but note that Mitsuhirato is a surname). Mitsuhirato might merely be intended to sound like an elaborate Japanese name, similar to the famous group of companies Mitsubishi (三菱, "three diamonds," literally "three water chestnuts"). Mitsuhirato could also be interpreted to mean "three flat doors" (三平戸). In the Japanese version, Mitsuhirato's name is written "ミツヒラト" in the script used for foreign words, possibly to downplay his Japanese nationality