You Only Live Twice – Ian Fleming, 1964 ★★★½

Death in the Face

Death has a way of losing its celebrity and becoming a less obtrusive if ever-annoying companion as one ages. It seeps into everything, closing off future hopes and replacing them with grim resignation.

Ian Fleming was nearing the end of his life when he wrote You Only Live Twice; you feel that from the way it reads. There is a sense of wan completion in Bond’s journey this time around. Frantic pace and knife’s-edge tension is replaced by philosophic contemplation.

And yet despite a sepulchral tone, this manages to be quite a gripping spy thriller most of the way through. For over half of it, Bond is immersed in an unusually realistic and low-key diplomatic mission involving a crash course in Japanese culture. Just as you settle into that, you are plunged into an utterly phantasmagoric personal mission involving one of the most bizarre yet familiar villains of the 007 canon.

Uneven? Yes, but fascinating, too.

In the first chapter, Tiger Tanaka, former kamikaze turned Japanese spy chief, instructs Bond in the Eastern ways of espionage: “In the West, when you have secrets to discuss, you shut all the doors and windows. In Japan, we throw everything open to make sure that no one can listen at the thin walls.”

In Japan, James Bond encounters an blend of modern consumerism and ancient tradition. Tiger Tanaka describes it as "Baseball, amusement arcades, hot dogs, hideously large bosoms, neon lighting... part of our payment for our defeat in battle. They are the tepid tea of the way of life we know under the name of demokorasu."
Image of Toyko's Ginza district in the 1960s from https://www.flickr.com/photos/55777341@N00/4262223260

Tanaka makes a welcome addition to Bond’s long parade of friends and allies. If the novel seems more interested in their back-and-forth than delivering a big-stakes Goldfinger-style adventure, it’s an agreeable sort of arrangement. Bond’s mission this time is to win over Tanaka and gain access to a useful stream of Soviet intelligence, codenamed MAGIC 44. The job is so low-key he doesn’t even have his double-0 license-to-kill designation this time. He’s for once an ordinary spy.

Bond needs this mission to go well; he’s been on a losing streak since his wife was killed at the end of the prior novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Having blown his last two assignments, Bond is on thin ice. His boss, M, considers easing his legendary employee into retirement. But a psychiatrist friend suggests something else entirely:

“What he needs most of all is a supreme call on his talents, something that’ll really make him sweat so that he’s simply forced to forget his personal troubles. He’s a patriotic sort of chap. Give him something that really matters to his country.”

This is bad advice. Firstly, you don’t need to be Dr. Phil to know putting someone already on edge into a high-stress situation is a prescription for disaster. Secondly, Bond hasn’t been all that great at completing missions for, well, since Ian Fleming began writing them.

A June 1960 Japanese demonstration against a treaty with the United States turns violent. Bond is told by an Australian colleague not to believe talk of Japan embracing democracy: "Scratch a Japanese and you'll find a samurai - or what he thinks is a samurai."
Image by https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1960_Protests_against_the_United_States-Japan_Security_Treaty_03.jpg

In a prior blog post, I noted Bond’s many miscues in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and to avoid spoilers, let’s just say the man hasn’t gotten any better at his work. His focus is lacking and he can’t resist the occasional wiseass remark, even when he’s supposed to be playing diplomat. Tanaka tells how a boy who failed an exam made amends by putting his head into a working piledriver:

“Suicide is a most unfortunate aspect of the Japanese way of life.” Tiger paused. “Or perhaps a most noble one. It depends on how you look at it. That boy, and his family, will have gained great face in his neighbourhood.”

“You can’t gain face from strawberry jam.”

This sort of raillery actually amuses Tanaka, though, bringing him over to Bond’s side. Like I say, Tiger is a cool guy. The back-and-forth ribbing also provides much of the enjoyment of what is, for all its hero’s flaws, a fine, first-class novel. It’s not standard Bond fare, but it is a fascinating and subtle yarn, long on nuance if short on danger.

Wagyu cattle, the source for Kobe beef. In the novel, Bond is told the animal is fed beer and given a deep gin-soaked massage before slaughter, ensuring a more delicious meal. Apparently this is something of a myth, though the animals' coats are brushed regularly to improve circulation.
Image from https://www.japan.travel/en/sg/guide/wagyu-knowledge-101-how-much-do-you-know-about-wagyu/

It also is Fleming’s last great travelogue. He loved Japan, its people and culture, even as he freely drew some broad and extraordinary generalizations from his experiences there. Reading his colorful impressions – of Japan’s postwar “demokorasu” democracy and the concept of ON – fed through Bond’s point of view is riveting.

Bond becomes quite enamored with what he sees. He notes his preference for the Japanese way of bathing, for their strange food (he can’t resist a potentially lethal dish of fugu), and their alcoholic beverages, putting away enough rice wine that Tanaka warns him:

“We have a saying, ‘It is the man who drinks the first flask of saké; then the second flask drinks the first; then it is the saké that drinks the man.’”

Bond even tries his hand at a haiku, composing one that reflects Fleming’s obsession with death as well as gives the novel its title:

“You only live twice:

Once when you’re born,

Once when you look death in the face.”

Sean Connery in a lobby card for the 1967 movie adaptation. His Japanese disguise in the film is often derided for being silly and racist. It is a carryover from the book, where Tiger Tanaka has Bond made up so to go undercover for his big infiltration mission.
Image from https://limelightmovieart.com/shop/you-only-live-twice-original-us-lobby-card-1/

As the book goes on, it emerges that MAGIC 44 has been something of a red herring to the real business of the book. Fleming does this in a slow, masterful way that only impressed me more when I re-read it knowing the big surprise. Tanaka tells Bond of a mysterious European known as “Dr. Shatterhand” who has settled in a Japanese castle and converted its grounds into a literal garden of death:

“This man is a monster. You may laugh, Bondo-san, but this man is no less than a fiend in human form… He collects death.”

[SPOILER ALERT] “Dr. Shatterhand” is the new nom de plume of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and his female companion the evil toad-faced Irma Bunt, another adversary from the prior novel. That Bond confronts Blofeld will be no surprise to those having seen the 1967 movie adaptation with Sean Connery, but there it was an introduction. Here we get a climax to the running battle that began with the publication of Thunderball three years before.

Fleming makes this clear in his narration:

He was in cold control of himself. This was now a private matter. It had nothing to do with Tiger or Japan. It had nothing to do with MAGIC 44. It was an ancient feud.

To accomplish his mission and avenge his wife, Bond must traverse a steep waterside wall and infiltrate a large castle surrounded by a deadly garden. Above, Osaka Castle is a possible model for the lair of "Dr. Shatterhand."
Image from https://www.tsunagujapan.com/japanese-word-of-mouth-ranking-top-20-castles/

The second half of You Only Live Twice is where the book gains its identity and most of its narrative thrust. However, it is also where Fleming’s grip on his story begins to weaken, slightly but annoyingly. Bond’s bad spycraft becomes more central as he bumbles into the villain’s lair and proceeds to do that thing Bond is so famous for: getting captured so the bad guy can lecture him about his shortcomings and reveal what he has been up to.

Given the fact Fleming had avoided exactly this sort of trope in Bond’s last two outings with Blofeld makes me wish he had done so this final time, too. Bond doesn’t even do more than get inside the castle than he’s already imprisoned and tortured, first with molten-hot geyser fumes, then by a long schadenfreude speech from his insane host:

“I have come to suffer from a certain lassitude of mind which I am determined to combat. This comes in part from being a unique genius who is alone in the world, without honour – worse, misunderstood. No doubt much of the root cause of this accidie is physical – liver, kidneys, heart, the usual weak points of the middle-aged…So, not unlike the gourmet, with his jaded palette, I now seek only the highly spiced, the sharp impact on the taste buds, mental as well as physical, the tickle that is truly exquisite.”

The deadly garden Bond visits in the book's climax contains a variety of poisonous plants found around the world. Among them is the common oleander, a flowering shrub that is flush with toxic glycosides. Fleming claims a person once died from eating meat cooked on oleander sticks.
Image from https://www.britannica.com/story/7-of-the-worlds-deadliest-plants

The finale is rather sudden and strained. True, it would have been hard to whip up something fully satisfying after the build-up this showdown has been given over multiple books. But you feel the author rushing to wrap up the big battle.

That isn’t quite the ending of the book, however. Complications ensue when Bond returns to the quiet fishing village where he had been making his preparations for assaulting the castle. In that village he came to know a strong young fisherwoman named Kissy Suzuki who is determined to keep Bond safe and forever close by.

In case the death theme wasn’t already heavy enough, Fleming brings the book to a close with Bond’s obituary. Written by M, it is a revealing account of Bond’s origins, including his Scottish father and Swiss mother. At the end of his article, M includes this sharp disclaimer:

The inevitable publicity, particularly in the foreign press, accorded some of these adventures, made him, much against his will, something of a public figure, with the inevitable result that a series of popular books came to be written around him by a personal friend and former colleague of James Bond. If the quality of these books, or their degree of veracity, had been any higher, the author would certainly have been prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act.

A first edition dust cover of You Only Live Twice showcases two deadly denizens of Blofeld's garden. Published less than five months before Ian Fleming's death, a well-preserved copy can fetch over $1,000 on the open market.
Image from https://www.abebooks.com/

Bond isn’t actually dead, of course. His fate is left up in the air, not to be resolved until Fleming’s final Bond novel, The Man With The Golden Gun. That novel was likely not completed by Fleming, though; what we get here is nothing less than Fleming’s last, living word on 007.

That it is one of the best Bond books is clear, even if it isn’t as great as the big three: Casino Royale, From Russia, With Love, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Like those books, Fleming’s appreciation of his lead character’s humanity is as palpable as any yarn-spinning tension. This time, Fleming suggests something else: the closer you get to the end of life, the more you appreciate what you are leaving behind.