page_title: You Only Live Twice (film)
section_title: Filming
hierarchical_section_title: You Only Live Twice (film) / Production / Filming
caption_attribution_description: English: The miniature Autogyro, Little Nellie, as seen in the James Bond movie You Only Live Twice, here at a convention with its creator and pilot, Wing Commander Ken Wallis.
context_page_description: You Only Live Twice is a 1967 spy film and the fifth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, starring Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. It is the first Bond film to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, who later directed the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me and the 1979 film Moonraker, both starring Roger Moore. The screenplay of You Only Live Twice was written by Roald Dahl, and loosely based on Ian Fleming's 1964 novel of the same name. It is the first James Bond film to discard most of Fleming's plot, using only a few characters and locations from the book as the background for an entirely new story.
  In the film, Bond is dispatched to Japan after American and Soviet crewed spacecraft disappear mysteriously in orbit, each nation blaming the other amidst the Cold War. Bond travels secretly to a remote Japanese island to find the perpetrators, and comes face-to-face with Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE. The film reveals the appearance of Blofeld, who was previously a partially unseen character. SPECTRE is working for the government of an unnamed Asian power, implied to be the People's Republic of China, to provoke war between the superpowers.
context_section_description: Filming of You Only Live Twice lasted from July 1966 to March 1967.
  The film was shot primarily in Japan, and most of the locations are identifiable.
  In summary:
  Tokyo: After arriving in Japan at Akime, Bond goes to Tokyo. The initial scenes are set in and around the Ginza area. The Hotel New Otani Tokyo served as the outside for Osato Chemicals, and the hotel's gardens were used for scenes of the ninja training. A car chase was largely filmed in the area around the old Olympic Stadium. Tokyo Tower and the centre of Tokyo can be briefly seen in a sequence where the villain's car is dropped in Tokyo Bay. Tanaka's private subway station was filmed at the Tokyo Metro's Nakano-shimbashi Station. A sumo wrestling bout was filmed at Tokyo's sumo hall, the Kuramae Kokugikan; this has since been demolished.
  Kobe Docks appears in a sequence when Bond investigates the ship Ning-Po, and is involved in a fight.
  Bond's wedding at a Shinto Shrine was filmed in Nachi.
  Himeji Castle in Hyōgo Prefecture was depicted as Tanaka's ninja training camp.
  The village of Bonotsucho Akime was where Bond and his Ama wife lived and where the Ama scenes were shot.
  The ryokan Shigetomi-so (now known as Shimazu Shigetomisoh Manor) was used as the exterior of Tanaka's house.
  Kagoshima Prefecture was the location for various scenes depicting Little Nellie (see below).
  Mount Shinmoe-dake in Kyūshū was used for the exteriors of SPECTRE's headquarters.
  Most of the interiors were shot at Pinewood. The opening sequence in Hong Kong used some location footage of a street in Kowloon. Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour is also shown, but the at-sea burial of Bond and the retrieval of the corpse was filmed off Gibraltar and the Bahamas. The scenes with the light aircraft ferrying Bond to his supposed death were shot over very English-looking countryside in Buckinghamshire, whereas this was supposed to be Japan.
  Large crowds were present in Japan to see the shooting. A Japanese fan began following Sean Connery with a camera, and police had to deal with fan incursions several times during shooting.
  The heavily armed WA-116 autogyro "Little Nellie" was included after Ken Adam heard a radio interview with its inventor, RAF Wing Commander Ken Wallis. Little Nellie was named after music hall star Nellie Wallace, who has a similar surname to its inventor. Wallis piloted his invention, which was equipped with various mock-up armaments by John Stears' special effects team, during production.
  "Nellie"'s battle with helicopters proved to be difficult to film. The scenes were initially shot in Miyazaki, first with takes of the gyrocopter, with more than 85 take-offs, five hours of flight and Wallis nearly crashing into the camera several times. A scene filming the helicopters from above created a major downdraft, and cameraman John Jordan's foot was severed by the craft's rotor. It was surgically reattached by surgeons visiting the country, and then amputated in London when the surgery was deemed to have been flawed. Jordan would continue work for the Bond series with a prosthetic foot. The concluding shots involved explosions, which the Japanese government did not allow in a national park; hence, the crew moved to Torremolinos, Spain, which was found to resemble the Japanese landscape.  The shots of the volcano were filmed at Shinmoedake on Kyushu Island.
  The sets of SPECTRE's volcano base, including operative heliport and monorail, were constructed at a lot inside Pinewood Studios, at a cost of $1 million. The 45 m (148 ft) tall set could be seen from 5 kilometres (3 miles) away, and attracted many people from the region. Locations outside Japan included using the Royal Navy frigate HMS Tenby, then in Gibraltar, for the sea burial, Hong Kong for the scene where Bond fakes his death, and Norway for the Soviet radar station.
  Sean Connery's then-wife Diane Cilento performed the swimming scenes for at least five Japanese actresses, including Mie Hama. Martial arts expert Donn F. Draeger provided martial arts training, and also doubled for Connery. Lewis Gilbert's regular editor, Th
caption: The Little Nellie WA-116 autogyro with its creator and pilot, Ken Wallis
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