Books

First edition, first impression, dedication copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to Richard Hughes, one of the two journalists to whom the book is dedicated: "To Dikko-san from Fleming-san. With all affection." Fleming first met Hughes (1906-1984), a hard-drinking Australian ex-boxer and part-time spy for MI6, around 1950. The Bond author was then foreign manager at the Sunday Times; Hughes was his Asia correspondent. During the 1950s, Fleming supported Hughes while the latter worked as a double agent, inventing false information for him to feed to Soviet diplomats in Japan. Given his history in espionage, Hughes is now recognized as "a source for Bond" (Shakespeare, p. 400). The two men shared a lively friendship. They travelled together in 1959 to Hong Kong, Macau, and Tokyo, while Fleming was on tour for his round-the-world travelogue Thrilling Cities. When Fleming returned to Japan in 1961, "seeking local colour, factual detail, spiritual information and carnal folklore" for a future novel, he enlisted Hughes as his local guide (Hughes, p. 257). Hughes, in turn, recruited the Japanese journalist and photographer Toreo "Tiger" Saito to join them. Fleming was clear about what he wanted to do on the trip. "After perhaps a couple of days in Tokyo, I would like us to take the most luxurious modern train down south to the inland sea and beyond to whatever bizarre corner of Japan you and Tiger can come up with. I have in mind somewhere like Fukuoka. I would also like to see pearl-girls diving - my heroine will be a beautiful ama girl who has learned to speak English working on an underwater film in Hollywood - and hot baths, a live volcano for suicides, and any terrifying manifestation of the horrific in Japan" (quoted in Hughes, p. 258). Hughes recalled that they embarked on their odyssey "amid the gorgeous colours of late autumn... We stayed at Western-style hotels and lonely inns, purified ourselves at the Grand Shrines of Ise, crossed the Inland Sea, paid reverence to the great Japanese poet Basho at one of his innumerable birthplaces, concentrated on saké, lay long together and argued ideologically in hot-spring baths, survived two mild earthquake shocks, met one of Tokyo's leading gangster bosses (murdered six months later), and drank turtle blood at a sayonara banquet with respectful members of Japan's new secret police" (p. 257). The three men lived gregariously, and Hughes fondly remembered their time together as "the most instructive, enjoyable, crowded, leisurely, lively and hilarious trip I ever made in thirteen long and happy years of residence in Japan" (p. 257). Fleming immortalized his two travelling companions, little disguised, in You Only Live Twice. "There will be a mad foreigner in an old Japanese castle, and it will be James Bond's task to bring him to book, with the help of Tiger, who will be transformed into the head of the Japanese civil service. You, Dikko, will be Australia's secret service chief in Tokyo" (quoted in Hughes, p. 258). The book is jointly dedicated "To Richard Hughes and Torao Saito. But for whom etc....". It is one of only five James Bond books to carry a printed dedication. Hughes's character, Richard Lovelace Henderson, features prominently in Chapter 4, "Dikko on the Ginza". "The huge right fist crashed into the left palm with the noise of a .45 pistol shot. The great square face of the Australian turned almost purple and the veins stood out on the grizzled temples". Later, Hughes's character is described as looking "like a middle-aged prize fighter who had retired and taken to the bottle... that evening they had gone for more serious drinking to Henderson's favourite bar, Melody's, off the Ginza, where everybody called Henderson 'Dikko' or 'Dikko-san'". Fleming's thinly veiled portrait of Hughes was the closest he came to breaking intelligence cover. Hughes's initial reaction to the novel was guarded: "I wrote to him threatening libel and he said, 'Dear Dikko, go ahead if you like, but if you make any case that stands up, then I'll write the truth about you'" (quoted in Shakespeare, p. 401). Hughes later provided the inspiration for "Old Craw", doyen of the Hong Kong Correspondents' Club, in John le Carré's The Honourable Schoolboy (1977). Le Carré paid tribute to "the great Dick Hughes" in his foreword: "Some people, once met, simply elbow their way into a novel and sit there till the writer finds them a place. Dick is one". READ MORE Octavo. Original black boards (Gilbert's binding A), spine lettered in silver, title in Japanese to front cover in gilt, patterned endpapers. With dust jacket, designed by Richard Chopping. Housed in a custom black quarter morocco folding box by the Chelsea Bindery. Spine slightly cocked, a little browning to endpapers as often, a few pencil underlinings to first two chapters; minimal rubbing and creasing to extremities of unclipped jacket: a very good copy in near-fine jacket. Gilbert A12a (1.1). Richard Hughes, Foreign Devil: Thirty Years of Reporting from the Far East, 1972; Nicholas Shakespeare, Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, 2023.

In 'You Only Live Twice,' James Bond is devastated by the death of his wife and goes to Japan on what seems a diplomatic mission. He becomes involved with the mysterious 'Tiger' Tanaka and his plot to disrupt the Soviet intelligence network in Japan. Bond's revenge takes him on a dangerous quest after his nemesis, Ernst Stavro Blofeld.