Book Info: The Man with the Red Tattoo By Raymond Benson Orion Books; London; 1999; pp. 267
	Shaken, not stirred Ian Feming You Only Live Twice MI6 does not exist But MI5 does

Bonding in Japan
By: Yuki Allyson Honjo

Even with the over-the-top 007 camp, the 1967 James Bond film You Only Live Twice was surprisingly prescient. Filmed twelve years before Ezra Vogel’s Japan as Number One and decades before its economic Bubble, the movie hinted at a glamorous technological Japan, balancing a Hollywood version of its traditional past with an industrial future. Less than thirty years after World War II, Bond’s Japan was no longer the land of defeat or kitsch breakables, but one where the Japanese Secret Service agents, such as Tiger Tanaka, are capable of outsmarting 007 into coming to their secret underground lair. 

The newest installment of the James Bond pantheon is The Man with the Red Tattoo, where almost thirty years later, Bond returns to Japan. While the characters have felt the passage of time, Raymond Benson, the latest author to take up Ian Fleming’s mantle, essentially recycles the 1967 film.

The novel has a strong start: Kyoko McMahon, the Scottish-Japanese daughter of a pharmaceutical magnate dies alone on a Tokyo London flight. The rest of her family soon follows, victims of a genetically altered West Nile virus delivered by a new breed of killer mosquitoes. James, nominally in Japan as security for a G-8 conference, realizes Goro Yoshida, yakuza-boss and leader of a world terrorist organization, orchestrated this mass assassination. Yoshida wants to control the McMahons’ company to mass produce the killer virus and unleash worldwide mayhem. Only “stunningly beautiful. . .exotic” Mayumi McMahon, who had long since run away from home, can save the company and stop the merger. Mayumi, unfortunately, works in the red light district in Sapporo and cannot be found. Naturally, 007 must save Mayumi and the free world.

The characters in the book have the same tang to those in the film. James Bond and the Japan team are back: James, the same suave spy, but perhaps more weathered around the corners, and Tiger has had a triple bypass. The capable Agent Aki of You Only Live Twice has a virtual clone in “sexy. . .class act” Agent Rieko Tamura. Both agents, after sleeping with Bond, suffer untimely deaths—a hazard, it appears, of their occupation. Bond shifts his attention to another beautiful Japanese woman in the second act: the virgin bride Kissy Suzuki in the film, in the novel, the Scottish-Japanese whore, Mayumi. The evil genius Blowfeld with his personal army is replaced with Yoshida and his associates.

Benson reuses set pieces to sketch different aspects of Japan: Benson has not strayed far from the 007 movie formula. Both Bonds experience “traditional Japanese culture” through performance: in film, he goes to a sumo match, in Benson’s book, he goes to Kabuki. Bond’s visit to Osato Corp, a front-company for more sinister activities, echoes Bond’s experience at CureLab which, (surprise!) is to be used as a front for the world domination business. Both feature forms of transport to showcase “modern Japan”: Bond and Aki go to the Kobe docks in the film and fight their evil counterparts while illustrating the height of shipbuilding technology. Now, Bond and Reiko fight villains on the bullet train while waxing about its efficiency. As for “rural Japan,” Kissy’s quaint fishing village is interchangeable with the Ainu village of the novel. While these snapshots of Japan were novel in the 60s, they are clichés in the present.

Goro Yoshida initially appears to be a thought provoking character, but in the end, he reverts to type. He is likely to be the only Bond villain to be motivated by Yukio Mishima’s literature. Yoshida and his right wing army in the Hokkaido vow to fight “the enemies of Japan.” However, Yoshida’s preoccupations appear reminiscent of those of the Black Dragon society of the Fleming novel.

Nationalism as the impetus for a Japanese mob villain is a credible and intriguing angle. But Benson only hints at, but never fully explores, Japan’s right wing relationship with the Yakuza. In the end, Yoshida’s motivation is the same old WWII chestnut: “Yoshida felt he was a man who never forgot his wartime catechism: the doctrine of Japan as a ritually ordered state, the samurai way of life characterized by manly courage and feminine grace and the vision of imminent death as a catalyst for life.” 

Which brings us to ask: What happened to the last thirty years? What about Japan’s economic and political ascendancy and decline? While we can excuse Bond’s timelessness, Benson’s Japan is a mere background for Bond shenanigans, and predictable ones at that. The plot of Fleming’s novel (quite different from the film version) has a delightful Bond, unashamedly the picture of political incorrectness, a womanizing British bon-vivant. Benson’s Bond seems to be laboring through a series of disconnected tourist slides of Japan. 

This is not to say Benson has not done his research. He fills the book with leaden factiods on Japan: “The [Kamakura] Daibutsu has been here since 1252. It used to be housed in a huge hall, but the building was washed away by a tsunami in the late 1400s.” Even the walking distance between Shibuya and Meiji Shrine is accurate. 

However, while the details are numerous, Benson misses the big picture altogether: Bond, supposedly a spy on the cutting edge of politics and technology, has been left behind in 1967. Perhaps Bond will “die another day,” but clearly not in Japan.

Yuki Allyson Honjo. “Newest Bond Retraces Familiar Terrain,” International Herald Tribune-Asahi Shinbun, February 26, 2003. Pg. 24.