Queer re-view: You Only Live Twice

James Bond dies! (in more ways that one)
James Bond gets married! (for convenience)
James Bond turns Japanese! (and is actually quite happy until he’s dragged back to ‘normal’ life against his will)
Also: more phallic objects than you can shake a stick at (oh behave!)

If this is your first time reading a re-view on LicenceToQueer.com I recommend you read this first.

‘Inspired by You Only Live Twice’ by Herring & Haggis

‘You only live twice:

Once when you are born

And once when you stare death in the face.’

- Haiku poem written by James Bond in the novel of You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming

Blofeld: They told me you were assassinated in Hong Kong?

Bond: Yes, this is my second life.

Blofeld: You only live twice Mr Bond.

- Dialogue exchange in the film of You Only Live Twice, screenplay by Roald Dahl

It might seem odd to begin an analysis of a film which is essentially a bit of escapist fun with a discussion of a subject most people find, understandably, upsetting. Namely (and it is important we name these things, so we can talk about them and understand them): suicide.

Suicide is integral to You Only Live Twice: both the book and, I argue here, the film. It’s also integral to my own life. For several years in my early twenties I felt like taking my own life was the only way I could solve the problem of being gay. I thought coming out would shame me and make everyone I cared about stop caring about me. It’s embarrassing to type that now because of how ridiculous it sounds. Nothing could have been further from the truth, as it turned out, but how was I to know that then? If my being honest helps just one queer person in a similar situation, or a friend or family member of a queer person understand what they’re going through, then it’s worth any amount of embarrassment on my part.

I know that many people who read this, queer or not, will have gone through similar experiences to me. As I will explore, suicide is more common than many realise. It’s a social taboo, but one we need to talk about. If you find this piece triggering in any way please reach out to someone - there are links at the bottom of this page and you can get hold of me by using the links in the top right.

The suicide discussion is mostly in the first section (“The name’s Bond, Fleming Bond?”) so you can skip it if you want. And if you mostly visit this site for jokes about things shaped like penises, I hope I won’t disappoint: in this piece I have more than the average (calm down - we’ve not even started yet!).

“The name’s Bond, Flaming Bond?”

Unlike the novel it’s loosely based on, You Only Live Twice is one of the most lightweight of the films, a romp which is equal parts travelogue and sci-fi fantasy. This is in large part due to the decision to discard most of the book’s story, the first time this had happened after the relatively faithful adaptations of Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball. Even if they had wanted to go with the book’s story (which even Bond calls a “daft setup”), they wouldn’t have the death of Bond’s wife to fuel the plot because that hadn’t happened in the film series yet. The story simply would not make sense without a suicidal Bond at its centre.

I have no doubt that the novel of You Only Live Twice appealed to me as an unhappy queer teenager because it’s essentially an allegory for beating suicidal thoughts, thoughts I had in abundance.

It’s a sad fact that queer people are many times more likely to consider taking our own lives than those who are not queer. Here in the UK, it’s more than a quarter of us. An eighth of young queer people (18-24) go on to attempt it. The figures are considerably higher for trans people in all age brackets. 

In Japan, the setting for the majority of both the novel and the film of You Only Live Twice, nearly twice as many people kill themselves each year than in the UK. Nevertheless, Japanese suicide rates have fallen substantially since Ian Fleming wrote his novel or Lewis Gilbert directed his film and are currently at an all time low in Japan, although young people are disproportionately affected. Overall suicides are actually rising “significantly” in the UK with several times more men ending their own lives than women across the age range.

At the start of Fleming’s book, James Bond is already far down the path of self-loathing, well on his way to his ultimate destination: self-destruction. 

007 is sent overseas on a “death or glory” mission to prevent Japanese people from killing themselves in the carefully cultivated ‘garden of death’ of a fellow European. To stop Blofeld and destroy his garden, Bond has to change his entire identity (including his nationality). But first, he needs to overcome himself. In M’s words, his best agent is “going to pieces”, grieving for his wife and blaming himself for her death. Bond’s almost killed himself (and others) by botching missions and his alcohol-dependency, always a problem, is out of control. He sits on park benches counting the minutes until his next drink. 

While I was not a secret service agent with a recently-deceased wife at the time I first read these early passages (or since, for that matter), I could relate to Bond’s bleak outlook on life. Back then I was suffering what the MI6 psychoanalyst diagnoses Bond with: a mental state brought on by “an intolerable life situation”. I go a little red in the face as I type this, but part of me was mourning the wife I would never have (and, by extension, happiness), a husband not being an option. The other part just hated myself. I didn’t feel as good as everyone else.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development declared in 2019 that the UK is only slightly more accepting of homosexuality than Japan with both only “halfway to full social acceptance”, appearing around 5 on their 10 point scale. The USA appeared between the two, slightly above Japan and slightly below the UK. All three countries were significantly below other countries like Germany, Australia, Sweden and Iceland.

At several points in the novels, Bond reveals he feels like an outsider (most directly in the early part of Moonraker). You Only Live Twice’s psychoanalyst claims Bond’s mental state has come “out of the blue” (because of his wife’s death), ignoring the character’s tendency towards melancholy that runs throughout the book series, what Fleming labels either “ennui” or “accidie”, a streak of the character which always resonated with me.

Would I have had this streak if I hadn’t known from an early age that I was different to everyone else I knew? Who knows.

Bond’s self-loathing streak is there in the films too, if you look for it, although it usually manifests in the form of the accoutrements of high living so beloved of Bond’s creator: smoking, boozing, engaging in dangerous sports, driving fast cars too quickly. The film of You Only Live Twice has most of these stand-ins for the most extreme form of self-destruction, although it’s not Bond doing the driving this time (see You go gurls!, below). And at least the cigarette comes with an era-appropriate health warning (“it won’t be the nicotine that kills you Mr Bond”).

Fortunately for me, it was actually staring death in the face that helped make up my mind to come out and start my second life. I know lots of queer people who feel the same. The phrase ‘You only live twice’ encapsulates that feeling of beginning again. I feel privileged to have made the choice I did, but it could have easily gone the other way, as it does for too many.

The film’s plot concerns an attempt to start World War III by stealing rival powers’ space capsules. While this is, on the surface, a world away from the book’s “daft setup” of Blofeld lording it over a ‘garden of death’, I would argue that it taps into the same suicidal concern at the heart of the book. The world powers (USA and Russia, with the UK literally caught between) will literally destroy themselves by destroying each other. What’s more suicidal than mutually assured destruction? Director Lewis Gilbert even reheats the exact same Cold War premise when he returned to the franchise a decade later for The Spy Who Loved Me.

And let’s not forget that Bond is willing to sacrifice his own life for his cause in You Only Live Twice. It’s only his blunder as he attempts to board the space capsule, noticed by Blofeld, that stops him being fired off into space where he will presumably have to sabotage the hardware, with little chance of being able to return to Earth in one piece.

Bond’s ‘death’ in the pre-credits sequence of the You Only Live Twice film also turns out to be a suicide of sorts, although Bond acts as if the ludicrously elaborate attempt to erase his identity is a surprise to him (purely to mislead the audience we presume). We gather from M’s post-titles exposition that 007 has become too well known and needs a lower profile, a metatextual comment on the news of Connery’s resignation from the role and the Bond-mania that was still sweeping the globe perhaps.

Far more interesting than the opening sequences ‘death’ is Bond’s attempt to assimilate himself into Japanese life, which survives translation from book to screen largely intact. This is the beginning of his real ‘second life’.

For as long as I can remember, I have always been fascinated by Japan. Is this because I was attracted to what I saw as its ‘otherness’ while I struggled to connect with my own culture? Like the Bond character of the novels, I have always felt like I’ve been on the outside looking in on British culture. I have sought to make connections elsewhere.

Countless studies of English-language media have shown how Japanese culture is often presented as being radically different to ‘our’ own. Often, ‘they’ are defined by their differences to ‘us’. It’s to the filmmakers’ credit that the presentation of Japan and its people in You Only Live Twice, although inevitably Orientalist, is not as distorted as it could have been. This despite it being just over two decades after the Second World War, a time when the Japanese were widely vilified in all forms of US and UK media, even including the wartime output of the Disney company. 

The presentation of Japanese culture in You Only Live Twice is undoubtedly exaggerated and stereotypical: at times it feels like the filmmakers were ticking off a list of Japanese cultural icons for viewers seeing these things for the first time: neon signs, sumo wrestlers, sake, ninja, volcanoes, fans, wood and stone castles, etc. And why not? Most viewers at the time would have relished the exoticism. It’s all done with a wide-eyed tourist’s gaze, without condescension or derision. I have visited Japan several times (dragging my husband along to several of the locations from this film) and, although a tourist visit is never enough to garner a true insight into a whole country’s culture, I have never felt a massive mismatch between the Japan of You Only Live Twice and the ‘real thing’. Perhaps others who have lived there would disagree?

The only part that feels really awkward to me is Bond’s physical transformation into a Japanese man. But if we’re laughing, our target is Bond himself. He’s the one whose biggest insecurity is losing his impressive manly rug of chest hair.

While this is hardly the ‘staring death in the face’ crisis moment of the novel, Bond’s loss of identity is still a death of sorts. Bond folds away his usual persona and adopts another in order to sneak into Blofeld’s lair. Like many queer people before they come out, he compartmentalises his life, adapting to the situation rather than being ‘himself’. He even learns how to be, and dresses up as, a ninja. Bond’s customary suits are in noticeably short supply in You Only Live Twice (probably in part because of the extreme heat during the shooting, but it works for the character’s transformation as well).

Most significantly from a queer point of view, Bond undertakes a lavender marriage; a marriage of convenience. The scenes where Tiger teases Bond about his upcoming nuptials smack of misogyny (and/or repressed homoeroticism, see Tiger Tanaka in Allies, below). The marriage itself remains unconsummated, at least until the mandatory mission: accomplished coitus. 

Bond’s marriage is merely a cover story which helps him integrate with Japanese society, something many Japanese people can relate to, even today. While marriage remains central to life in Japan, same sex marriage is still not possible, although positive public support is outpacing that of politicians, so hopefully things will change soon. In the meantime, marriage between men and women remains the only option and singledom still hampers progression in some professions. One gay male Japanese critic has lamented what he calls men (whether straight or gay) ‘killing their selves’ in order to marry, just to get ahead in their careers. Marriages of convenience are not unique to Japan, of course. I know plenty of people in the UK who have gone through with them. And unlike in many countries (including my own), homosexuality has never been illegal in Japan. And yet, in a recent survey more than four fifths of Japanese people claimed not to know any LGBT people at all, despite 10% of Japanese people identifying as such (a proportion commensurate with similar surveys in other countries, including the UK). The numbers don’t stack up. Clearly there are a lot of ‘under cover’ queer Japanese people.

Gender studies researcher Ioana Fotache concisely sums up the state of LGBT acceptance in Japan as follows [my emphasis]:

Japan is often portrayed as a comparatively tolerant country due to the scarcity of LGBT-related hate crime and active persecution (Vincent, Kazama and Kawaguchi 1997, 170). However, discrimination exists at a systematic and institutional level, as Japan does not have an anti-discrimination law, same-sex partnerships are only recognised to a limited extent in certain cities, and workplace discrimination, bullying, and suicide rates continue to be a problem for the queer population. The current consensus seems to be that queer culture is tolerated, so long as it stays segregated and does not disturb the majority (Equaldex n.d.; Hidaka et al. 2008; Taniguchi 2006; Vincent, Kazama and Kawaguchi 1997).

In other words, if you’re queer that’s okay as long as you keep quiet about it.

It’s hard to talk about something when you lack the words though. Japanese does, of course, have words to describe same sex relations. But since 2010 Japanese LGBT activists have started to use terms from English, including ‘LGBT’ itself, which has led to an opening up of the discussion. These recent imports hardly make up for the fact that repression of homosexuality and non-cisgendered identities was due in large part to the importing of these ‘western values’ in the late nineteenth century. As we find with many other cultures around the world (Jamaica, India, etc) the Japanese weren’t especially homophobic and transphobic until the ‘west’ made them homophobic and transphobic.

Is it any wonder that so many queer people - from any culture - harbour suicidal thoughts when they have to be constantly concerned with concealing who they really are?

In addition to Bond’s ninja and fisherman guises, he poses as an executive of a chemical company, Mr Fisher. Is the name a foreshadowing of his later (truer?) fisherman identity? Is this intimating that Bond feels more at home in an identity where he can utilise that first class degree in oriental languages from Cambridge University? As usual, he seems comfortable around another culture’s food and drink (although his observation about the correct temperature of sake is ridiculously smug, even for Connery’s Bond). And he has no qualms about stripping naked in front of another man in the onsen, as is the custom in Japanese bath houses.

It’s interesting that the novel You Only Live Twice ends with an amnesiac Bond living out a quiet, almost ascetic life as a Japanese fisherman. Was Fleming suggesting that such an existence would, at last, allow his creation to be happy? Was he himself pining for an alternate existence?

The Bond of the films is afforded no such simple pleasures of course. His ‘turning Japanese’ was only a phase. He rejects this identity, or rather has this identity taken from him.

“They’ll never let you stay,” says Kissy Suzuki.

“But they’ll never find us,” replies Bond, embracing her.

And then a gigantic submarine appears, a symbol of western phallocentric heteronormative patriarchal power (the less said about seamen the better), literally rising from the depths to take him back to ‘normal’ society.

Friends of 00-Dorothy: 007’s Allies

If only more men would feel comfortable telling James Bond “I love you” then he might not feel so lonely and insecure and unhappy most of the time. Head of the Japanese Secret Service Tiger Tanaka is a much warmer figure than M. Although he shares M’s disdain for Bond’s apparent womanising (“never get into a cars with a strange girl” / “chasing girls will be the end of you”), this comes over as more like brotherly advice. 

Or is it jealousy? 

He’s certainly very tactile with Bond, holding on to his shoulder, arm and even his hand for longer than we might expect. Perhaps because he’s Japanese and ‘other’ he gets away with it. Although for Bond’s part, he’s not averse to sitting very close to Tiger on Tiger’s private underground train as it shoots through tunnels running beneath Tokyo (all sorts of Freudian possibilities there!).

They are instantly intimate and their true bond is forged in the onsen where they both strip down to nothing (although the proprieties of making a film for the whole family mean they both wear nude-coloured bathing trunks, just about visible on screen). There’s a cultural difference here of course: in Japan, male work colleagues often go bathing naked together. That doesn’t mean there isn’t an erotic tension in the scene, especially with Tiger only having eyes for Bond. The unnamed women (who would be in their own part of the onsen in real Japan) are largely ignored until the end of the sequence.

If Tiger is subtly coded as queer, ‘Dikko’ Henderson (stop sniggering at the back) is more overt, unapologetically telling Bond he gets his vodka from the doorman at the Russian embassy “amongst certain other things”. Played by queer actor Charles Gray (who returns two films later as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever), Henderson is epitome of the mostly acclimatised ex-pat who nonetheless wants to retain vestiges of home. The character makes a strong impression despite his severely limited screen time, perhaps in part because of his taste in interior decoration. In addition to that pink lamp, those purple throw cushions are quite something. And he mixes a far superior stirred Martini to Bond’s customary shaken bastardisation.

Q goes into the field for the second time and brings a gyrocopter called Little Nellie with him. Nellie (or nelly) was first appeared in dictionaries with the sense of ‘a derogatory term for a very effeminate gay man’ from the mid-1960s, which means it was in every day language at the time of the production and release of You Only Live Twice, and probably had been for several decades before. The helicopter was named Nellie by its creator not in honour of the queer community but instead a British music hall star who was famous in the first four decades of the 20th Century, although Nellie did delight in playing roles made famous by men.

Speaking of which, Moneypenny looks resplendent in a navy uniform at a time when women weren’t even allowed to board submarines. This may even rival her other uniformed appearance in Diamonds Are Forever. Weirdly, Tiger knows all about her and Bond’s ongoing tete-a-tete, telling a surprised Bond “we have our sources”. This rather does beg the question: who? It’s almost as if someone’s leaking it on purpose. Another cover story perhaps?

It’s almost a shame that Moneypenny is used in the final shots to represent heteronormative ol’ Bligthy, taking delight at the prospect of interrupting Bond’s life raft liaison with Kissy.

Shady characters: Villains

Donald Pleasance is many people’s favourite Blofeld but it’s fair to say he wasn’t the preferred choice of editor Peter Hunt, who went on to direct the next Bond adventure, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and replaced him with Telly Savalas. Hunt’s comments were widely quoted in Hunt’s obituaries in 2002:

"I had a terrible time in the cutting room on You Only Live Twice (1967), with Donald Pleasance as Blofeld. Lewis [Gilbert] had made him into a camp, mini sort of villain. If you look at the film very carefully, Pleasance doesn't walk anywhere, because he had this mincing stride. He was so short that he looked like a little elf beside Connery. I used every bit of editing imagination I could so that he could be taken seriously as a villain."

Hunt was a queer man himself so one might be surprised to learn that he was comfortable using terms like “camp” and “mincing” is a disparaging manner. It’s unclear if this was internalised homophobia or whether he was just thinking of the needs of the film (would audiences not take an overtly gay villain seriously?). For his part, Pleasance was not (as far as we know) queer and played the role at very short notice after another actor had already been case. Whether we should credit Pleasance’s performance (and his choice of prosthetics), Gilbert’s direction or Hunt’s editing most of all (likely a combination of the three), it’s an defining depiction of a character who is most certainly ‘other’ when placed next to James Bond. He’s the iconic Blofeld, as lampooned in the Austin Powers series.

Like some gay men (including me!) Blofeld has a well-established preference for cats over dogs. Like some gay men (unlike me) he has an elborate taste in jewellery, including a massive ring on his little finger. Seriously, his ring is conspicuously MASSIVE. Now, take your minds out of the gutter for a second and listen as I tell you all about how, in Victorian Britain, single men and women would wear a ‘pinkie ring’ on their little fingers to signify that they weren’t interested in marriage. That’s it: that’s the serious bit. Now you can go back to the gutter.

The true villains, the people paying Blofeld to start World War III, appear in only one scene. Their nationality isn’t specified. They are uncredited, although some sources claim they are ‘chinese agents’. The casting of 22 year old Ric Young, who was born in Kuala Lumpur and moved to the UK aged 12, is therefore either insensitive or intentionally done to keep things vague. The Bond series always remains as neutral as possible when it comes to geopolitics. We don’t even get their names. His character perhaps gives off something of a queer vibe, especially when he says the line “My clients are quite satisfied.”

Helga Brandt is a another red-haired European femme fatale. Although she has less agency than the formidable Fiona Volpe from Thunderball, she does wield plastic surgeons’ implements in a moderately menacing way. She also has a penchant for over-dressing while aboard docked rusty old freighters, albeit if only to lure in a gullible British super spy so she can get him on board a small plane and then parachute out when his hands get trapped under a slide-across-board-thingy… That sentence was as exhausting to type as that sequence is to watch. WHY NOT JUST USE THE KNIFE TO KILL HIM?! This could go in the Camp section (below) but it’s already straining with the weight.

Mr Osato’s most villainous action is to figuratively throw Helga under the bus (literally: get her fed to piranhas). He was played by Teru Shimada whose obituaries point out that he ‘never married’ (a queer code? See the discussion of Peter Hunt; On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). It’s perfectly possible he was just too busy to marry (or not interested). He was, after all, one of the first high profile Japanese actors in Hollywood, despite being interned during the Second World War.

If You Only Live Twice was a video game Hans would be boss you have to defeat to get the key to get to the thingummy which will save the day. He’s a muscle queen without much of a brain in other words, except he has absolutely no words to say. The most interesting thing about him is he is blonde (see For Your Eyes Only for a discussion of blondeness and femininity in Bond). Other than that he’s just a beefcake in a tight sweatshirt, which is all very nice and good if you have time for that sort of thing but Hans baby, I’m trying to avert World War III - get out of my way!

You go gurls!

In Japan, according to Tiger, men come first. Tell that to action hero Aki who spends the first act of the film always one step ahead of Bond. She’s literally in the driving seat. After saving his life in the nick of time several times, she eventually gives in to his charms (“I think I will enjoy serving very much under you”) but there’s no hint of subservience in her voice. Aki refuses to believe Bond would sleep with Helga Brandt (“that horrible girl”) for the needs of the mission and she accepts his blatant lie (that he hasn’t slept with Helga) without question. Does this make Aki stronger or weaker? In the world of Bond, probably stronger because she’s not setting out to put Bond in a heteronormative ‘trap’ (see also Melina Havelock in For Your Eyes Only). It would be interesting to see what Bond would do if the shoe was on the other foot: a woman he was involved with sleeping with another man after being with Bond. Would he be similarly nonchalant? When Aki dies midway through (a poisoning sequence that unnerved me as a child), she we feel genuinely upset. This being Bond though, he doesn’t dwell on it, even if we do. 

Kissy Suzuki is much more subservient and one dimensional and Bond treats her as such, although she no less the action heroine. She’s the ‘beard’ for his marriage of convenience. Bond is interested in her sexually but not so interested that his focus doesn’t immediately shift to a helicopter when they kiss on the side of the volcano. Kissy spends most of her screen time in a bikini, even while escaping from the Spectre helicopter which is trying to shoot her down and when returning with Tiger’s strikeforce of ninja. In the interior shots of the volcano base she is allowed a little more clothing. The poor girl would freeze else!

Ninja aside, most of Tiger’s staff appear to be female, including the network of agents who have radios built into the lining of their handbags, which is both wonderfully camp and really quite practical at the same time.

Camp (as Dr. Christmas Jones)

Can you smell the testosterone? This film spends a lot of time in men-only environments: the submarine (Moneypenny is the only woman amongst lots of sailors in short shorts), the lockerroom of the sumo hall, the baths in Tiger’s house (the women are referred to by Bond as the “plumbing” so don’t count as ‘people’), the Kobe docks and the ninja/samurai training school. And what about all those astronauts/cosmonauts cooped up together? After several days in such close proximity I’m sure they would be able to smell far less pleasant things than testosterone.

The Russian diplomat is, appropriately, what some people in the gay community would refer to a ‘bear’. Grrrr.

Bond films are always obsessed with phallic objects but You Only Live Twice takes this to camp extremes. In addition to the usual guns, we have space capsules, rockets, submarines, trains and even liquid oxygen containers, all of which are conspicuously bulbous.

The film begins with a small capsule containing American astronauts being pursued by a much larger spacecraft which we are told is “coming up from the stern”. The control room (another homosocial space) is concerned. A clean cut man in a lumberjack shirt (representing hetero male America, one assumes) tries not to sweat. What are the Americans afraid of? That the Russians have a bigger spaceship than their own? Are they afraid they won’t measure up? To the astronauts’ (and our) surprise, the larger vessel opens up, looking not at all dissimilar to a vagina or an anus. Actually, on second glance, it’s both. It’s a vagina and an anus combined. A vagina/anus (let’s go with ‘vaginus’) and it’s coming to get you! It’s fear of female power and gay men who you think want to hit on you (newsflash: we don’t) wrapped into one!

As if this isn’t enough of a threat to their manhoods (what Freud might have called ‘castration anxiety’), one of the astronauts is only tethered to the ship with a long, thin oxygen cable which is snipped as the vaginus closes around it. The radio goes silent. This symbolic vasectomy has rendered the Americans impotent. 

If you think I’m taking this sexual subtext too far, I warmly encourage you to read the work of Carol Cohn, a expert in the field of defence. In particular, read her seminal essay ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defese Intellectuals’, published in 1987 which is even more relevant today, and will remain so as long as men persist with using vaguely penis-shaped things to hit or shoot each other with.

While some male researchers have made observations about defence workers’ irrational desire to have the biggest missiles (bigger not always meaning more destructive), the women have led the field. This despite, or perhaps because of, defence being a male-dominated profession. Perhaps as Cohn points out, men don’t even realise they are using “not-so-subtle” metaphors in the language they use every day every day. Cohn’s examples include: ‘penetration aids’, ‘more bang for your buck’; ‘the nicest hole’; ‘releasing megatonnage in one orgasmic whump’ and many, many more.

Cohn calls people who unknowingly use such language “white men in ties discussing missile size”. She quotes the feminist Helen Caldicott, who coined the term ‘missile envy’ after observing that the discourse between the USA and USSR often involved references to the relative size of their weapons, as if it were a measuring contest. 

Furthermore, these men are envious of other men who get to “”pat high tech phalluses”, something Cohn says indicates “homoerotic excitement”: one man getting to touch another man’s missile in a socially acceptable, sublimated way. Does the same apply to liquid oxygen containers Mr Bond?

Cohn’s tone in the discourse - both in 1987 and more recently, in the context of Donald Trump and his ‘bigger button’ - is one of semi-amused bewilderment. She can’t believe that these men, whose occupation is war, whose actions could entail the death of billions, are mixing sex and death so irrationally. She is most perplexed that these men don’t even realise what they’re saying and what this reveals about their thinking. They can’t see the wood (if you’ll excuse the expression) for the trees.

In the same way, were the mostly male filmmakers behind You Only Live Twice aware of the sheer amount of admiring (and being afraid of) other penis measuring and posturing going on in this film?

Queer verdict: 004 (out of a possible 007)

Even if we don’t detect the dark undercurrent of self-destruction in the DNA of screenplay, queer audiences will probably relate to Bond going deep undercover for the needs of society, even at personal cost to himself. Is it self-destruction or re-invention? Bond never really changes, just like queer people don’t. We know, deep down inside us, who we really, even when we are afraid to tell the world. James Bond doesn’t really die, get married or turn Japanese. But for two hours, we watch him try out different identities. Surely we can all connect with that on some level?

Further reading

If you are interested in queerness in other cultures I recommend this free book (PDF format) from E-International Relations. I found the chapter on Japan invaluable in preparing this piece. https://www.e-ir.info/publication/sexuality-and-translation-in-world-politics/.

Support with suicidal thoughts

Whatever you do: talk to someone. Don’t keep it inside. I almost made that mistake.

If you live in the UK: The NHS maintains a list of links to organisations including FREE helplines open 24 hours a day.https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/

There are several charities dedicated to supporting LGBT+ people including Switchboard (that has been running since 1974)  https://switchboard.lgbt/ and LGBT Foundation http://lgbt.foundation/

If you live in the USA: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

If you live in Japan: https://stonewalljapan.org/

If you live elsewhere... I cannot possibly list links for every country, although I know the people who read Licence To Queer are from all over the world. I recommend you go here https://www.befrienders.org/contact-us  Use the drop down in the top right to find a helpline in your country.

Please note that I am not responsible for the content of external websites but if you want to recommend a particular site or helpline please get in touch and I will be happy to check it out and list it here.