You Only Live Twice
FLEMING, Ian.
You only live twice. London, Jonathan Cape, 1964.
8vo, pp. 255; a couple of stains to fore-edge and to margins of pp. 192–5; a very good copy in the original black cloth, title in Japanese gilt vertically to upper cover, spine lettered in silver, bamboo-patterned endpapers; in a near-fine jacket designed by Richard Chopping.
First edition, first impression, first state of what is ‘perhaps the most bizarre and doom-fraught of all James Bond’s adventures’ (p. 1), set in Japan and inspired by Fleming’s visits to Japan for The Sunday Times, the title taken from a poem by Bashō: ‘You only live twice: once when you are born, and once when you look death in the face’.
‘You Only Live Twice' is the final entry in what has become known as the “Blofeld Trilogy” ... In order to negotiate with the Japanese security services on their homeground, James Bond is temporarily promoted from the ‘Double-O’ section to the Diplomatic Corps, becoming code number “7777”. Part of the plot concerns intelligence-gathering networks, information routes, code-breaking networks, ciphers and cryptography, all of which were familiar to Ian Fleming, who had run covert operations during the war’ (Gilbert).
Gilbert A12a (1.1, binding A).