A Licence To Read: You Only Live Twice

The Licence To Read series continues with the final Bond novel published during Ian Fleming's lifetime.

March 16, 1964 saw the publication of You Only Live Twice in Britain by Jonathan Cape. The first edition once again featured cover art by Richard Chopping.

The Impossible Mission

Devastated by the murder of his bride, James Bond is in a state of depression. Bond is transferred to the Diplomatic Section, and re-designated as 7777. He is given a seemingly impossible task - to convince the Japanese Secret Service to share information received through the Magic 44 cypher machine, which gives the Japanese access to Soviet radio transmissions. Tiger Tanaka - the head of the Japanese service, agrees to give the British access to Magic 44, provided that Bond assassinates Dr Guntram Shatterhand, a mysterious westerner who has a created a deadly garden in the grounds of a ruined castle on the Japanese coast. Bond discovers that Dr Shatterhand and his wife are none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Irma Bunt.

Instant Japan

Ian Fleming's style of writing, known as the 'Fleming Sweep' is noted for containing great detail about locales, food, drink and so on. You Only Live Twice is undoubtedly the greatest example of this style. More than just a cursory glance at the Japanese locations, You Only Live Twice is an immersion in the culture of Japan. These details were noted by Fleming on a trip to Japan in 1962, in which he "travelled the length and breadth of Japan . . . drank sake and turtle blood, ate Kobe beef and raw lobster, and visited Mikmitos island, where girls dive for pearls" (Henry Chancellor, James Bond: The Man and His World). With regard to the location of Dr Shatterhand's castle; the film producers searched the coast of Japan looking for a castle when preparing the film version. However, they were unable to find such a castle, so it would seem that this came purely out of Fleming's imagination, rather than any actual castle that he might have visited.

The Death Collector

Dr Shatterhand's garden of death has become an attractive place for suicide, and during his brief visit to the castle, Bond witnesses two suicides. This book, more than other written by Fleming has an overarching theme of death with gives the whole book a dark and eerie tone. Many people have cited Fleming's declining health as the reason for this obsession with death. The first reference to death occurs right at the very beginning of the book, with a poem written in the style of Japanese poet, Basho:
        "You only live twice:
        Once when you are born
        And once when you look death in the face"

Kingsley Amis, who was to write Colonel Sun after Ian Fleming's death, remarks in The James Bond Dossier (Jonathan Cape 1965) that You Only Live Twice is "Horrific and haunting in a way none of the others are, but travel-book material intrudes." It is as a result of Fleming's reportage for The Times about "Thrilling Cities" that he was armed with so much information about the exotic things going on accross the globe -for the World was a much larger place in the sixties and a lot of Fleming's readers did not have the luxury of an expense account or the opportunity to go globe trotting in such a way. The world he created for Bond is one that to this day is an exciting place indeed.

Obit:

The novel ends with one of the most unusual and unexpected endings of the series, as an amnesiac Bond heads off to Russia while presumed dead by M. Five months after the publication of You Only Live Twice, Ian Fleming died of a heart attack. You Only Live Twice proved to be a fitting last novel for Ian Fleming, although there were still to be two other works published posthumously. Fleming's prose is at its most rich and imaginative. The locations, characters and of course the culture of Japan are portrayed in great detail by Fleming, and the novel stands as one of the most unique and interesting Bond novels. If you are only familiar with the film version of You Only Live Twice, you will find the novel a surprising, but very rewarding read.

Critics' Opinions

"Must rank among the best of The Bond tales" - BOOKMAN

"A heady, lotus-eating mixture of unashamed sex and outrageous fantasy" - LIVERPOOL DAILY POST

"As damnably readable as ever" DAILY HERALD

"England's best export, a spice of adventure, a dash of patriotism, laced with sex, sadism, and expense account know-how" - SUNDAY TIMES

"Reactionally, sentimental, square, the Bond image flails its way through the middle-brow masses, a relaxation to the great, a stimulus to the humble, the only common denominator between Kennedy and Oswald" -Cyril Connolly, SUNDAY TIMES

"I notice that Ian Fleming has taken a hint from films of his books and is now inclined to send himself up. I am not at all sure that he is wise." - THE SPECTATOR

"You Only Live Twice has a decidedly perfunctory air. Bond can only manage to sleep with his Japanes girl with the aid of colour pornography. His drinking seems somehow desperate, and the horrors are too absurd to horify . . . it's ll rather a muddle, and scarcely in the tradition of Secret Service fiction. Perhaps the earlier novels are better. If so, I shall never know, having no intention of reading any of them" - Malcolm Muggeridge, ESQUIRE

"He is still in a class by himself" -BELFAST TELEGRAPH

"The characteristic which makes Fleming appear silly also helps to make him popular: his moral simplicity. When we read James Bond we know whose side we are on, why we are on that side, and why we are certain to win. In the real world this is no longer possible." - Robert Fulford, MACLEANS MAGAZINE (TORONTO)

Cover Gallery

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