You only Live Twice

You only Live Twice
Original title	You Only Live Twice
German title	007 James Bond rides the tiger, you only live twice
author	Ian Fleming
Previous novel	In Her Majesty's service
Subsequent novel	The man with the golden gun

You Only Live Twice is the eleventh novel in the James Bond series written by Ian Fleming . It was published in 1964. The German translation initially appeared under the title 007 James Bond rides the tiger ; After the very free film adaptation of the novel German Man Lives was called twice , the novel was renamed to the better known title Du lebst only twice .

action

The neurologist and Nobel Prize laureate Sir James Molony visits Bond's superior M because M worries about James Bond's psychological state. After his wife Tracy is murdered, Tracy neglects his job, drinks excessively and gambled away money in the gambling clubs. He botches his last important assignments by making mistakes that almost kill him and others. M would like to throw James Bond out, also at the risk of losing his best man, but Molony can convince him that Bond is at his best when he gets a strange, apparently unsolvable task.

When James Bond is called to M, Bond's secretary Mary Goodnight first has to correct his neglected appearance. He is aware that he has done a bad job lately and interprets the appointment with M as a termination. To his surprise, however, he was transferred to the diplomatic department, where he was given the task of persuading the head of the Japanese secret service Tiger Tanaka to use the MAGIC44 decryption machine. Bond gets agent number 7777 and immediately sets off for Japan. There he is disguised as number 2 of the Australian diplomat Richard Lovelace Henderson. He has very good contacts with Tiger Tanaka and manages to arrange a meeting between the two of them.

A month later, James Bond and Tiger Tanaka are good friends. Tiger Tanaka has convinced himself of the integrity of Bond through many small tests, most of which are based on the Japanese mentality, and makes an offer after Bond has politely defeated him on scissors, rocks, and paper . (This competition is described in the introductory chapter.) Since the Japanese secret service is very well informed about British communications, there is no adequate consideration for the MAGIC44, other than a special assignment from James Bond. He should be Dr. Turn off Guntram Martell and his wife Emmy (in the original Guntram Shatterhand). You had recently come to Japan with Swiss passports as a horticultural artist and botanist to create a park with exotic plants near Fukuoka. This park contains only plants that are dangerous for humans and should be available to interested experts for research. However, the park is guarded by former members of the secret organization of the Black Dragon Society and becomes a magnet for Japanese suicides. An agent sent by Tanaka reappeared blinded, burned and delirious, and could only stammer a haiku about dragonflies.

Tanaka and Bond immediately set off for Fukuoka. On the way he is made Japanese, i.e. H. his skin is colored darker, his hair is cut and he is accustomed to Japanese manners and customs. He also learns the art of ninjas in a secret service training camp. A squat man chases them all the time on a motorcycle, just before Fukuoka they can catch him. He is a black dragon, and in his notebook you can find a detailed description of their journey since Tokyo.

In Fukuoka, the chief of the criminal police showed them aerial photos of the Castle of Death and close-ups of the Martell couple. Bond recognizes them as his opponents Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Irma Bunt. For Bond, this turns the mission into a personal act of revenge for the murder of his wife. Tanaka recognizes Bond's change, but Martell does not reveal his identity because he fears that other secret services will try to arrest Blofeld, thereby depriving Bond of his revenge.

As a disguise, James Bond is housed as a deaf and mute worker under the name Taro Todoroki with the mussel divers in the family of Kissy Suzuki. She speaks English because she once worked as an actress in Hollywood. She then came back to her simple life because in Hollywood everyone except David Niven was bad to her. She named her cormorant, trained to fish, after him, who accompanied her and Bond when Bond helped her ailing father to catch mussels. Kissy falls in love with Bond and does not want to give him back, but she realizes from the prophecy of the six guardians that Bond is destined to destroy the castle of death. She swims with him to the rocky coast of the castle, where she wants to wait for him for an hour every night at midnight. Now he's on his own.

With the ninja gear, Bond climbs the cliffs and explores the park, where he witnesses two suicides. A third suicide had changed his mind, but is pushed into a pond with piranhas by the black dragons. During the day Bond hides in a shed, in the evening he sneaks into the castle. Due to a mistake he steps into a trap door and is captured. Irma Bunt thinks she recognizes him as James Bond, and after being tortured he has to give up his cover as a deaf-mute. When Blofeld tries to execute him with a samurai sword, Bond manages to get hold of a long stick and, with his new fighting skills, knock Irma Bunt down and strangle Ernst Stavro Blofeld. With the help of a balloon, Bond escapes, while the lock explodes due to a geyser blocked by Bond. Bond is shot, but Kissy Suzuki saves him from drowning after the balloon crashed.

Since James Bond is considered missing, an obituary written by M appears in the Times. In reality, however, he has lost memory and Kissy Suzuki decides to keep him to herself. The villagers play along, but she has to promise that she will release him as soon as he remembers his previous life. She therefore destroys all evidence of this, but by chance Bond discovers a newspaper snippet on which he reads the word Vladivostok . It evokes associations with Russia, and Kissy reluctantly releases it.

References to other James Bond novels

The events of In Her Majesty's Service are mentioned directly (Blofeld's disguise as Monsieur le Comte de Bleuville in a research facility on the summit of Piz Gloria in Switzerland , Bond's disguise as Sir Hilary Bray, the murder of Tracy Di Vicenzo Bond) and on a Dated year before the events at the Castle of Death. Blofeld mentions the company Feuerball from the novel of the same name . At the beginning of the follow-up novel, The Man with the Golden Gun , it is described how Bond regains his memory and returns to the secret service.

title

While studying to become a Japanese, Tanaka asked Bond to write a haiku . He writes: "You only live twice: once when you are born and once when you look death in the face."

literature

Ian Fleming: You only live twice ( "You only live twice"). 8th edition Scherz Verlag, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-502-51274-4 .
Ian Fleming: You only live twice . Coronet Books, London 1990, ISBN 0-340-42563-6 .
Ian Fleming: You only live twice . Cross Cult / Amigo Grafik, Ludwigsburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86425-092-7 .
Danny Morgenstern: 007 XXS - 50 years of James Bond - You only live twice , DAMOKLES, Braunschweig 2017, ISBN 978-3981903218

filming

The book served as a template for the film of the same name. However, screenwriter Roald Dahl only adopted a few elements of the novel. Parts of the novel, for example the role of Mary Goodnight, were taken over in the film The Man with the Golden Gun .