The last James Bond novel written and edited in Ian Fleming's lifetime (the final Fleming Bond novel was only in a rough draft stage when he passed away), You Only Live Twice is one of the more intriguing Bond outings. For starters for it is a sequel to the events of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, dealing with a widowed and emotionally-shattered 007 sent to Japan on a near-impossible diplomatic mission that soon proves to be anything but a break from Bond's usual "blood and thunder" missions. Featuring a characterization of Bond we've not seen before, it also allows Fleming to indulge in some travelogue writing, catching from a Westerner's point of view early sixties Japan, a rising power as seen from a rapidly diminishing one. It's also, for all of the suspense and action in the final act, a surprisingly morbid book, with a borderline obsession with death and a sense of winding down clear from both its author and its main character. All of which results in some of the most meaningful and surprising chapters in the Bond canon.

All of which leaves You Only Live Twice as an outlier of sorts among Fleming's novels and the ones that came later, but also one of the best.

"I’ve found that one must try and teach people that there’s no top limit to disaster – that, so long as breath remains in your body, you’ve got to accept the miseries of life. They will often seem infinite, insupportable. They are part of the human condition."
- Ian Fleming, You Only Live Twice



Ian Fleming took James Bond off the interstate of his more traditional espionage novels with the last couple books. You Only Live Twice is Fleming putting James back into the "game". The settting for most of this novel is Japan. Bond is hunting (for the Japanese) Dr. Guntram Shatterhand, who turns out to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. It is interesting enough, but seems a bit dated with the NINJA scenes and Yellow Face.

Mostly interesting. Fleming pushes "fun facts" (accurate?) about the land of the rising sun throughout the continued battle between Bond and his arch nemesis Blofeld. Blofeld and his wife Irma Blunt are the masterminds behind SPECTRE. SPECTRE objective is to unwind Western democracies like Great Britain and the US with grandiose schemes of mass hysteria and chaos.

Doctor Shatterhand has entered Japan as a billionaire eccentric with interested in botany. He builds a fortress of deadly plants, trees and piranha on a castle-fortress. His exotic death-gardens attract Japanese suicide seekers. The long history of ritual suicide from the Bushido code of the samurai and more recently with the kamikaze pilots is considered an honorable answer to humiliation and shame. As Shatterhand calculates, hundreds of suicidal Japanese seek out his death fields to end their life.

Bond is sent to Japan to put and end to Shatterhand's antisocial experiment. Once he discovers Shatterhand's true identity, his wife's killer and his archnemesis Blofeld, he has all the motivation he needs to accept the assassination mission. Blofeld's castle is only penetrable from the sea. He will need training in the art of the ninja and help from the pearl diving Ama women of Kuro Island. He needs the skill to approach the castle by sea, and to scale the walls and stay unseen through his stealth training. Fortunately for Mr Bond, Kissy Susaki, a 23-year old beauty from Ama, serves as his sea trainer and guide.

This book is true Fleming but the misogyny and objectification of women is less abrasive than the other Bond books. The bad guy is less developed than in other books, which t may be because Blofeld was previously introduced in a prior novels.

Fleming's ham-fisted narrative technique is distracting, but once the mission heats up, the reader has enough interest in Bond's fortunes to forgive his narrative clumsiness.

Fleming’s final novel was You Only Live Twice. He passed away months later. Fleming did, not Bond. This though is a bit of a different Bond. When the story opens, he is still distraught over the murder of his wife by arch-enemy Blofeld, who appears in three novels, this being the final one. Bond uncharacteristically has failed in his last two missions and might never be trusted with another mission. Could this be the end of Bond? it might be.

Bond though is given one last chance to prove he still has what it takes. Japan, in the post-war world defers the United States. Britain, which now finds itself as a weaker power a lesser power has no real connections in Japan for information, but want Magic 44, a decoding machine. Thus, a deal is made in which bond is to go to Japan and work with the Japanese Secret Service, who wants to eliminate some strange European, Dr. Shatterhand, was a castle, one of the islands surrounded by poisonous plants, which Japanese men go to commit suicide. It is thought best that an outsider rather than a need of Japanese should take care of this so that there are no repercussions politically.

Much of the novel is involved with Bond learning Japanese customs and ways which are very different than western ways and also developing a disguise for bond as a Japanese fisherman. The fact is such a great disguise that Blofeld, the crazy European in the castle on the island, doesn’t recognize Bond when Bond shows up and is captured. It is a formidable castle, when that appears frankly impregnable, but Bond manages to ski the walls and get inside and even get next to Blofeld.

Kissy Suzuki is the Bond girl in this novel. She is a Japanese shell diver possessed with extraordinary swimming ability who guides him to the island where he makes his sneak attack on Blofeld. She also rescues him at the end when he ends up with amnesia and hopes to keep him with her forever in that state of mind.

The film version follows the basic plot, but differs from the novel in a number of respects. Kissy is played by Mie Hama, who became the first Asian woman to appear in Playboy in her 007 pictorial.

Me on page 1: "Surely that whole nonsense with Sean Connery successfully passing himself off as a Japanese man is NOT part of the book."
Me halfway in: "You've got to be kidding me. Why, Fleming, why???"
Me on the final page: "I don't know what just happened but I don't want it."

This was the first 'Bond' book that I've read and in hindsight it probably wasn't the best choice to start with.

Having grown up on the Bond films I was aware that the books were quite different to gadget-centric films of the same name. However, I was quite disappointed that there was basically no action until the final fifth of the book and not once did he punch anyone in the face (I R DISAPPOINT).

It's obvious from the book that Ian Fleming had quite a good understanding of Japanese culture and wrote about in a very sympathetic way considering the time when the book was written.

However the blurb on the back should have read: "Boorish, washed up Western spy goes on a supposedly impossible mission but spends most of the time looking at tautening Japanese breasts and insulting his hosts before strangling Blofeld in his volcano lair".

Is that a spoiler? Not as much of a spoiler as the 350 page tourist guide to Japan that prefaces the 50 or so pages of action.

Maybe I was expecting too much from Bond (yes, it was written in simpler, gentler times (yeah right) so maybe there was only a certain amount of violence allowed). I'll start from the beginning of the series and find out.

The best of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels by far. As a hardcore Bond-film fan, I was once sceptical about trying the 007 literature - it's no secret that they are extremely different - but I've got into it since then. Last year, I polished off On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Casino Royale (which was one of my 2021 favourites), and From Russia With Love. I loved every single one. Having finished this one, I cement my status as an Ian Fleming fan - which I didn't think I would ever say!
For those who wish to remain unspoiled, I shall summarise the review below: phenomenal 007 finale with an extremely frustrating ending!

You Only Live Twice is a treasure for all sorts of reasons. It contains everything readers love about the previous Bond novels: sexy characters, fabulous locations, a brief dose of (albeit fictionalised) non-Western culture, effective tension, and above all intensely human characterisation from our protagonist James Bond. I love how real he feels, even in his good, bad, and ugly moments. You'll find no sudden Sean-Connery-style cartoon deus-ex-machina helicopters in this novel. In what is clearly a romanticised, not-real plot (Blofeld producing a Death Garden?), Bond is an intensely grounded, realistic, human character. That juxtaposition works beautifully.

This novel's main gem, however, is the final confrontation between Bond and Blofeld that we never got in the films. It starts where On Her Majesty's Secret Service left off: Bond falling apart with grief at Tracy's death. M, upon the advice of an MI6 psychologist, sends him off on a diplomatic wild-goose-chase to take him out of himself, at which point he encounters - by an admittedly disbelief-suspending coincidence - Ernst Stanvro Blofeld masquerading as Dr Guntram Shatterhand, manufacturing a garden filled with every exotic poisonous plant and venomous animal from across the world. The immense Bond-fan satisfaction stems from not only the continuation of Bond's grief (no bizarre time jumps or attempts to divert the story in a new direction) but also the fact that we get one final, proper face-off between the hero and the villain. We even get treated to dragon-like symbolism: overt references to Blofeld being "larger than life", with the "golden dragon embroidery" of his kimono "crawl[ing] menacingly across the black silk and seem[ing] to spit real fire from over the left breast." The reader almost imagines a knight fighting a dragon, which indeed is corroborated by Bond's duelling him with a stave (perhaps reminiscent of a lance or sword). It is an enormously satisfying conclusion.

What contributes to the aforementioned satisfying conclusion is Bond's death. After a beautifully written finale where he falls from his balloon into the sea, M. writes the famous Times obituary which even lends us an insight into the character's backstory, before finishing with the very Bond-style philosophy: "I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

Leading to THE MOST FRUSTRATING ENDING OF ALL TIME: turns out Bond's not dead at all, but alive and well and living with amnesia (conveniently) with the charming Kissy Suzuki back at his Japanese island. This is my bone to pick with You Only Live Twice. In a book that endlessly strives to present itself as final (the continuation from OHMSS, the chapter titles such as 'Curtains for Bond?' and 'Obit', the final duel, being written towards the end of Fleming's own life and even containing an obituary laced with anecdotes from Fleming's own backstory), the slapped-on epilogue could not feel less final. The final page is absolutely ridiculous: the reader has zero interest in Bond 'discovering who he really is' by travelling to Russia. The reader knows who he is. For a novel so obviously building up to Bond's death, Fleming still can't bring himself to kill him off - backing out at the final second with an epilogue setting up a 'rediscovery-of-self' sequel. And we got that sequel: The Man With The Golden Gun, published posthumously (and unfinished). Can't wait to read that - sounds great(!).

I remember when J.K. Rowling published Deathly Hallows replete with an epilogue, and whilst most readers loved it, some people loathed it and strove to forget it existed. I am partially inclined to do the latter for You Only Live Twice. Or, especially as the obituary hilariously refers to a 'writer' who has gained popularity for recording Bond's 'adventures' (nice one Fleming), perhaps we can pretend that this writer is continuing Bond's legacy with his own survival fantasies. These fantasies could even have extended into what then became The Man With The Golden Gun. Yes, maybe that's the answer.

Den of Geek. (2021). No Time to Die Is the Best You Only Live Twice Adaptation. [online] Available at: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/no-t... [Accessed 12 Feb. 2022]. - please also see this link for a fantastic side-by-side comparison of this novel and the recent No Time To Die.

WOW! I coarser through this novel, enjoying every scene but I don’t regard it as high literature. It is fun, entertaining and worthwhile. So far in the Bond series (of novels) I find little remarks by Fleming to hint at his influences and his own feelings about the work. In this, on the next to last chapter, where M writes about James Bond and references a fictional series, I felt that this was Fleming making his own commentary on his work.

Then the last chapter dropped a subtle bomb. I don’t like to offer spoilers so you will need to read it yourself. Sorry.

Whilst I could have deducted a star for cultural inappropriateness, the overarching theme of Bond as a spy in Japan, and the era in when this was written, makes that a petty move, so five stars it is.
There's almost a redemption arc to this story - Bond, as a broken man, is sent to Japan to achieve an impossible task, and after drinking more than his body weight in sake, confronts his demons.
I found it interesting how minimalistic the cast was - the usual suspects in London, an Australian intelligence agent, a Japanese intelligence agent, a girl (would it be Bond without a girl?), and the antagonist. A sharply written book with no extras or padding. A romping read, as some would say. And an illustration of not straying from the task in hand as some writers are wont do to, myself included!

In 1964, Ian Fleming wrote Bond #12, You Only Live Twice. Three years later, someone must have decided they hated the book and made a movie about something completely different. Essentially. The two certainly do not have a lot in common.

For good measure, the original trailer.

One word about the movie that makes it more awesome than the book: The screenplay was written by my beloved Roald Dahl. The truly Dahl-esque moment (which is shown in the above trailer) is when a helicopter carries a car full of bad guys with a giant magnet and drops them into a body of water. Watch that part wasn't even Dahl's idea. We'll pretend it was.

This was the last book that was published during Fleming's lifetime. I'm not sure what to say about that, other than it's sort of interesting that Bond "dies" in both the book and the movie, though at different parts in their stories and under different circumstances. Anyway, the deaths sort of seem profound now that I know Fleming died a few months after the publication of the book.

Seriously, it was like they threw out the book entirely and just let Dahl go bug-nuts crazy with his own story. At least the movie included piranhas as they were in the book. I mean, really. You can't get rid of the piranhas. Or Blofeld, the villain. He's in both the book and the movie, and it's sort of hard to ignore that fact. Blofeld is what makes the Bond world go 'round. At least for three stories or so, and this is his last hurrah. See? Lots of last hurrahs with this one.

But in the movie there's this whole space-sequence thing that involves a weird metallic tampon-like thing, and somehow that wasn't even in the book. The movie did, however, remove all the blatant racist comments that were included in the book. They just let Connery do his typical smarmy sort of thing which oozes racism as well as sexism. In the book, though... it's cringe-worthy. Comments about the Japanese having large teeth, except for the lovely Kissy whose mouth is apparently just right, and... y'know, I'm not even going to repeat some of the things Bond said about the Japanese. It's undignified.

I give this a full three stars, mostly because of the movie - I like Roald Dahl and I also like Nancy Sinatra. Screw you, I do. Perfectly cheesy for another perfectly cheesy Bond flick. So my enjoyment of this book actually has very little to do with the book. Because the book was especially racist.

Next up: On Her Majesty's Secret Service (aka that one movie with that one George Lazenby guy who could only hang for one Bond movie).

If you ask me, the first chapters of the book are THE BEST EVER written by Mr. Fleming, as they are worthy of any anthology about Japan and its inhabitants.
There are no fights, no killings, only a tasty and very interesting description: Kobe steaks, Fugu fish, sake and Geisha, elements of history and geopolitics, many of them valid even today. In addition, Tiger Tanaka and Dikko Henderson are the most colourful secondary characters I've ever met in the Bond series. Unfortunately, in the second part the level decreases to the usual below average, so you may choose whether to go further or be pleased with the first part...

2.5*

"The Superintendent went to the bottom of his file and extracted what looked like a blown-up copy of Doctor Guntram Shatterhand’s passport photograph and handed it over. Bond took it nonchalantly. Then his whole body stiffened. He said to himself, God Almighty! God Almighty! Yes. There was no doubt, no doubt at all!"

You Only Live Twice or, as I really want to call it, On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Part Deux, because I can't help seeing parallels to the second Hot Shots! movie, deals with a James Bond that has been broken after the events of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Bond has lost his interest in his job, is depressed, puts missions and lives at risk, chases pleasures aimlessly, and is on the verge of being fired. The only reason he is not is that M is persuaded to set Bond an improbable task that has no other aim than to make Bond realise that he needs to step up his game.

What M does not know, is that the investigation into the strange goings on on a Japanese island will play right into Bond's troubles.

"Bond held the pictures, not looking at them, thinking. Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Irma Bunt. So this was where they had come to hide!"

You would think that this set up of Bond being sent to investigate something far away from his usual life would provide some opportunity for Bond to reflect or try to deal with his own losses, you know, to make Bond grow as a character. But no. Instead, Fleming decided to use this book as an opportunity to showcase his own interest in all things Japanese and use Bond as a tool for comparing Fleming's understanding of British and Japanese cultures.
This part of the book is fun. It might, with good reason, make you doubt Fleming's research. There are at least two eye-roll inducing assertions in Fleming's portrayal of Japan - and one of which, about sumo wrestlers, seems to have become a myth that has transcended the Bond franchise.

Never mind, eh?

As this Bond buddy read comes to a close (only 2 books left, one of which is a re-read of a short story collection), I have come to really ask myself why I stuck with the series and had not abandoned Bond's exploits after From Russia With Love, which was one of the very worst books I have ever read. Ever.
Well, I have to admit that Fleming's attempts at dazzling his readers with bullshit are one of the reasons this series has been fun. I don't mean Fleming's xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, snobbishness, ... I really mean the times when Fleming tries to persuade the reader of facts that are ... wrong. The series is riddled with mistakes about biology, history, physics, chemistry ... anything that can be researched. Yet, Fleming talks about this stuff with so much conviction that reading a Fleming novel inevitably makes you question your own knowledge. It is fun to discover the errors or to learn something you didn't know by looking at topics that Fleming discusses with enthusiasm which just don't sound true. (Even more so if you have a patient reading buddy who doesn't mind sounding out some of the ideas with you.)

On the flip side, what I haven't enjoyed so much are the plots of the Bond novels. There are exceptions of course: Casino Royale, or Dr. No come to mind here, but overall the plots - reading in today, that is - were quite simplistic and often boring.
In You Only Live Twice, I would even go as far as to say that there is no real plot. Or at least, there is nothing that makes the plot interesting: There is not even an evil master plan to overthrow. We meet Blofeld and Bunt again, but they are mere mad shadows of their characters from On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Where is the fun in this?

So, overall, this is an interesting novel for getting to know a little bit more about Fleming and his estimation for Japan, but it is an utterly boring Bond adventure, that ends with a weird variation on Madama Butterfly.

Such an odd novel.