You Only Live Twice (1967) is the fifth film in the James Bond series and Sean Connery’s fifth appearance as 007. Directed by Lewis Gilbert and written by Roald Dahl, the film begins with the apparent death of Bond in Hong Kong before sending him undercover to Japan to investigate the mysterious disappearance of American and Soviet spacecraft. His search leads to the powerful industrialist Osato and eventually to SPECTRE, whose leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld is attempting to provoke a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Donald Pleasence makes his first full appearance as Blofeld, complete with the scarred face that would become one of the character’s most familiar images, while Tetsuro Tamba plays Japanese intelligence chief Tiger Tanaka and Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama appear as Aki and Kissy Suzuki. With its Japanese setting, Little Nellie autogyro and enormous volcano hideout, You Only Live Twice became one of the most visually ambitious Bond films of the 1960s.
You Only Live Twice (1967) was filmed primarily in Japan, with additional work in Hong Kong, the Bahamas, Spain and at Pinewood Studios in England. Tokyo appears extensively, with Hotel New Otani used as the exterior of Osato Chemicals, Nakano-shimbashi Station providing the entrance to Tiger Tanaka’s secret underground headquarters and the now-demolished Kuramae Kokugikan hosting the sumo match attended by Bond. Streets around the city were also used for the chase involving Aki’s white Toyota 2000GT. At Kobe Docks, Bond investigates the Ning-Po before becoming involved in a rooftop fight, while Himeji Castle became Tanaka’s spectacular ninja training school. Farther south, the production made extensive use of Kyushu: the small fishing community of Akime in Kagoshima became the village where Bond lives after marrying Kissy, and the volcanic landscape around Mount Shinmoedake provided the exterior of Blofeld’s supposedly hollow volcano. The Little Nellie aerial sequence was filmed over the mountainous landscape around Miyazaki and Kagoshima, although shots involving rockets and explosions had to be completed around Torremolinos in Spain because the filmmakers were not permitted to use such effects inside the Japanese national park. Bond and Kissy’s wedding was filmed at Kumano Nachi Taisha in Wakayama Prefecture. The vast interior of Blofeld’s volcano was not Japanese at all: production designer Ken Adam created the enormous set at Pinewood Studios, large enough to contain a full-size rocket, a working monorail and even a helicopter flying inside it. The film’s opening also used Hong Kong, while the scenes surrounding Bond’s staged burial at sea involved filming around Gibraltar and in the Bahamas.
Himeji Castle
Himeji Castle is in The Garden of Women, Miyamoto Musashi, You Only Live Twice, Abarenbō Shōgun, Shogun's Samurai, Kagemusha, Shōgun, Ran and many more.
Shinmoedake
Shinmoedake has appeared in You Only Live Twice (1967). Its crater represent the apparently extinct volcano concealing the secret rocket base.