Juta Tanaka was the blind sensei and inventor at the center of Predator: Blood Feud, a four-part Dark Horse serial by Neal Barrett Jr. and Leo Durañona. He ran a dojo in modern Tokyo and worked with his lover Elaine, a doctor, on a device meant to let sightless people see heat images. When a Predator slaughtered his students, Juta began to remember a past life in the age of the shogun, when he had killed a demon as a blind boy chosen by Shinto monks. The dead hunter's brother had come for revenge, and Juta finally faced it with a katana in the ruins of a summer palace near Nikko.
Biography
Blind Sensei In Tokyo
Juta had been blind since the age of ten, and he taught martial arts to a group of pupils in Tokyo. Elaine called him Juta-chan, while the police addressed him as Tanaka-san and sensei. One night, walking home from Elaine's place, he explained his idea for a neural implant that would stimulate the part of the brain responsible for sight. It would not give sight the way other people saw, but it would let a blind person receive the infrared radiation of other people as heat images. Elaine teased him about his one-track mind, and Juta said he wanted to get the idea into the computer before it got away.
On the way a street gang attacked them, and Juta fought the young toughs without his sight until one of them fled, shouting that he was the blind killer. Afterward he complained that every kid in Tokyo wanted to be a yakuza hood. Then he stopped in the middle of a sentence. In his head he saw a battle in the eighteenth century, with samurai, townsfolk and something terrible that did not belong, and he told Elaine that he had been there. He had seen things in his head ever since he went blind, but nothing had ever been so vivid and real.
The Massacre At The Dojo
When Juta and Elaine reached his building, he sensed at once that something was wrong inside. Elaine found his students butchered and hanging in the dojo, and she named the dead one by one as Jiro, Mokurai, Kazuo and Gasan. Juta demanded to know what kind of maniac would do something like this to his pupils. As Elaine went to call the police, he told her to turn around and walk out of the door, because someone was still there. His guide dog Shadow growled into the dark, and Juta stayed behind in the wrecked hall to face a killer he could not see.
First Fight With The Hunter
The Predator crashed out of hiding and tore Shadow apart when the dog flew at it. To his amazement, Juta suddenly saw the creature and Elaine as glowing heat images, exactly as if he already had his device. He met the hunter hand to hand, ducking under its wrist blades and driving his fists into its mask, until a blow hurled him through a wall. The Predator stood over him, muttered that it was not seeing him and left. Juta told Elaine that he did not know what it was, but he knew it had come for him, because it had not got him the last time.
A police inspector apologized to Juta for a poor choice of words and said he knew who the sensei was, but he still had to ask his questions. Juta told him that something had slaughtered his pupils, that they had put up a fight, and that the inspector could call the maniac whatever he liked. Later Elaine admitted that she had also glimpsed the creature before it faded out, and Juta realized that it could cloak itself. He regretted leaving Shadow unburied, since she had been his friend as well as his eyes, and he sat up through the night with the data for his device.
Visions Of The Shogun's Japan
That night Juta dreamed of his other life as the pupil of Lord Sugai, sparring with staves in the courtyard of a castle. Demons, the oni, had appeared in the land and slaughtered many of Sugai's friends, old samurai who had put away their swords to pursue the gentler arts. Sugai saw that the demons were hunters rather than true warriors, but that they had their own kind of honor. The shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi sent his army against them, and nearly a thousand men lay dead or dying on the field, while the losses among the demons went unrecorded.
After the massacre the shogun refused to send his army out again and chose to send a single champion against one demon instead. In the dream an arrow from the gods struck young Juta's heart in the courtyard, and he told his master that he must fight the demon. Sugai protested that he was not a samurai, only a boy, and that he was blind. The dream ended with a demon striking him down, and Juta woke screaming in Elaine's arms. He told her that it had been no dream, that he had seen how it started and how it had to end, and that there was nothing after that.
The Road To Nikko
Juta could find nothing useful in the data for his device, because everything had changed once he saw the creature in his head. He told Elaine that the visions were memories of another Juta, and that he had known Lord Sugai, the shogun and the creatures that slaughtered everyone. They drove north toward Nikko, past a small village, a river and a Shinto shrine on a low hill, with Juta guiding her from memory. At the end of the road lay a pile of rocks, which he said was one of the shogun's summer palaces, razed after what had happened there.
Among the rocks Juta remembered the despair in the palace after the slaughter, when the shogun raged and even his favorite daughter feared to stay in his presence. Then a different memory surfaced from his own childhood. A Shinto monk told Juta's father that the boy had been chosen for the task, as all of his line had been given the dream, and his father cried that Juta was his son and asked to go in his place. Juta fell to his knees and understood that losing his eyes had been no accident, because the monks had blinded him so that it would be like it was before.
The Hunter In The Ruins
The cloaked Predator rose over them among the rocks. Juta charged it, shouting that it had caused all of this, and demanded that it fight him because it had come for him. The hunter dodged him, called him fast, and swatted him aside with the remark that he was the wrong kind. When soldiers hidden in the ruins opened fire, the Predator tore through them with its blades and complained that it was boring and no fun. Juta stood among the dead men and screamed at it to fight him, but the hunter ignored him and moved on.
Afterward an official in a trench coat raged that he had dead men all over the hillside and threatened to lock Juta up if he was hiding something. Juta replied only that he had dead friends as well and did not know what the creature was. On the drive home he asked Elaine whether he should tell the authorities that a monster from his past wanted him dead, and joked that she would be visiting him in an asylum. They found troops at his door, and Elaine said that they were officially in a war zone.
Return To The Ruins
At home Juta asked himself why the hunter had come for him and yet would not kill him. With a katana laid before him, he called on his sensei of the past to open his unseeing eyes and show him what he had been chosen to do. The voice of Lord Sugai answered that the gods had called him to face the oni then, and that they had now called upon him again. Juta protested that he saw nothing within him but his death and could not face it a second time, yet when he searched deeper he saw the mask of a demon.
General Kataro, a former student whom Juta called Miyamoto, answered his call and drove him to the army checkpoint, saying that the student comes when the sensei calls. Juta thanked him but refused to explain, and he leapt from the car with a long case once they were through. Among the rocks he dug where his vision guided him and pulled out an old Predator helmet and a katana. He recognized the blade as the katana of his family, the twin of the one he had brought from home, and he was still wondering why the demon and the sword lay together when the cloaked hunter appeared behind him.
The Duel
This time the Predator attacked in earnest and slammed Juta into the rocks. The voice of his sensei told him that the creature had seen the past in the helm of its hunt brother, the demon Juta had killed long ago, and that it now knew him as the one. The Juta he had been was also blind, and he could see in the other way, as the demons themselves could see. Now the hunter was free to finish what it had come so far to do and to erase the shame of its brother's defeat.
Juta rose with the old katana and mocked the hunter, telling it that its ugly brother had honor and had tried to kill him with that very sword. They clashed in a furious duel, and although Juta was badly cut, his blade took the Predator's head and added it to the headless Predators of the franchise. Holding the masked head, he realized that he was still alive. The voice told him that the vision of his death had been created by his own fears, and that the true death was the end of all this. Juta then let the old sword fall beside the headless body.
The Feud Ends
Five cloaked Predators then gathered on the ruined wall above him and declared that it was over now. Their ship lifted away into the night sky as Elaine ran up the path with the official and the soldiers and embraced Juta. These hunters of the Nikko Clan accepted the outcome of the duel and made no move against him. Juta was left standing among the rocks of the summer palace, alive and with his sword in hand, three centuries after the feud began.
Personality And Traits
Juta was proud, sharp-tongued and stubborn. He refused to let his blindness define him, fought a street gang and a Predator with his bare hands, and told the police that he would not have seen anything even if he had been there. He was deeply loyal to the people around him and grieved for his slaughtered pupils and for Shadow. At the same time he admitted to Elaine that he was too scared to care about honor and begged the memory to let him go. Only after searching within himself did he accept the duty laid on him as a boy and face the demon a second time.
Skills And Equipment
Although he had been blind since childhood, Juta was a martial arts master who ran his own dojo and beat a whole street gang on his own. He was also an inventor, developing with Elaine a neural device meant to turn infrared radiation into images for sightless people, although he never got it working in the story. In his own head he could see the Predator as a heat image without the device, and his sensei explained that the Juta he had been could also see in the other way, as the demons see. His final weapon was the old family katana that he dug up at the summer palace.
Behind The Scenes
Juta Tanaka first appeared in Predator: Blood Feud, serialized in the anthology Dark Horse Comics #4 to #7, cover dated November 1992 through February 1993. Neal Barrett Jr. wrote the story, with Pierce Watters credited as consultant on Japanese history and tradition, while Leo Durañona penciled and inked every page. Eric Vincent colored the chapters and Ellie de Ville lettered them under editor Jerry Prosser. Durañona also painted the cover of Dark Horse Comics #4, which showed a samurai on a tiled rooftop facing a cloaked Predator, and that painting is the source of the hero image on this page.
Marvel collected the story in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 1 in December 2022, alongside the other early Dark Horse Predator stories. Juta's duel is one of the best-known clashes of Predators vs. samurai, a theme the franchise returned to decades later with the Samurai Killer Predator of Predator: Killer of Killers, which was also set in feudal Japan. The Predator Timeline places his story in the present day of the comic, three centuries after the first hunt under the shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi.
Conclusion
Juta Tanaka was a blind sensei in Tokyo whose students were slaughtered by a Predator seeking revenge for its hunt brother. Visions led him to a past life as the blind boy chosen by Shinto monks to face a demon under the shogun, and to the ruins of a summer palace near Nikko. There he dug up the old helmet and the twin of his family katana, overcame his fear of the death he had foreseen, and beheaded the hunter in a duel. Five cloaked Predators declared the blood feud over, and Juta walked away alive with Elaine.
Appearances
- Dark Horse Comics #4-7, "Blood Feud" by Neal Barrett Jr. and Leo Durañona (Dark Horse Comics, 1992-1993)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Predator Hunt Survivors
