David

David is Kissy Suzuki’s fishing cormorant, rescued as a chick and made a steady companion in her solitary work beneath the sea. He is more than part of the equipment for an Ama fishing trip: he has his own history, habits, and place in Kissy’s life, and he becomes a familiar presence for James Bond both before and after Bond loses his memory.

Rescue and Bond with Kissy

Kissy found David as a baby three years before the fishing trip with Bond. Oil had coated his wings; she cleaned him, cared for him, and placed a ring around his neck. As he grew, the ring had to be enlarged. Her account makes his presence on the water the continuation of a personal act of care, not simply the use of a bird for fishing.

David also keeps Kissy company during the long hours of diving. She explains that the sea can feel lonely, particularly when it is dark below the surface, and that he often swims beside her. Their partnership has a practical rhythm, but it is also close: when she calls him in, he follows her to the boat, where she strokes his head and neck and speaks to him. His attachment is evident in his readiness to come ashore and join her, while his attention remains his own; he initially ignores Bond altogether.

The name is a small, telling point of connection between Kissy’s island life and the world beyond it. She named the bird after David Niven, the English actor and producer whom she says she liked in Hollywood. Bond’s sudden jealousy at the mention of David gives way to surprise when the name proves to belong to a cormorant. The reveal introduces the bird not as a rival for Kissy’s affection, but as someone already woven into her everyday world.

A partner in fishing

David’s method makes the division of work clear. He can swallow small fish, but brings larger ones to the surface in his beak for Kissy to collect; sometimes he receives a piece of a large fish as a reward. On the day Bond accompanies them, David has not been out for three days because Kissy’s father could not row the boat. Kissy has been going with friends instead, so David is hungry when Bond arrives to help.

The bird’s entrance is vivid and self-possessed. Kissy reels in his line, and he shoots through the shallows, waddles up to her, and hisses. After she strokes him, he follows her to the boat, climbs aboard, and settles on the forward thwart. He preens his feathers, opens his wings—spanning five feet—and then watches the horizon with his neck drawn back. The thin brass ring at its base is attached to the line Kissy uses to keep him with the boat.

Bond’s role is to row and to hold the line when David surfaces. As the boat moves north under Kissy’s direction, the bird works alongside the diver rather than serving as a passive ornament in the scene. That arrangement also places Bond in a supporting role: he must learn the routine and take responsibility for the animal while Kissy dives.

Bond joins the routine

During the fishing trip, David’s work continues while Bond gets used to the boat. The catch accumulating in the wooden tub includes abalone and leaping fish. Bond retrieves fish from David, but once drops a slippery one; David has to dive for it again and fixes Bond with a haughty look. The incident gives the bird a distinct presence in a scene otherwise organized around Kissy’s diving and Bond’s awkward efforts to take part.

When Kissy finishes her stint, she reports that she has gathered twenty-one abalone and asks Bond to try diving with her weights and pick. Bond’s first attempts are clumsy: he is hauled up before he can collect a shell, and his lungs soon ache in the cold October sea. David, meanwhile, continues to move easily through the water. At the end of Bond’s half-hour effort, the cormorant shoots past him, gleaming black with green highlights, and pecks gently at his hair as Bond deposits his fifth shell in the tub. The gesture is presented as a mark of approval, a brief recognition between the inexperienced diver and the bird who has been working beside Kissy all along.

Life with Bond on Kuro Island

After Bond is injured and loses his memory, David remains part of Kissy’s care for him. She takes Bond for walks at night and for occasional swims in the cove, where the two of them play with the bird. She also tells Bond about the Ama and Kuro Island while keeping him from learning too much about the outside world. David thus belongs to the small, repeated experiences through which Bond comes to accept the island as his world.

The seasonal change brings the bird back into the fishing routine. In winter, the Ama stay ashore, mending nets and boats and working on the mountain smallholdings. When fishing begins again in spring, David dives with Kissy and Bond. The narrative places him among the details of their renewed life at sea—alongside the blue water, the blooming irises, and the cherry blossoms—without suggesting that he understands Bond’s lost past or the danger of its return.

David’s role is therefore both practical and intimate. He helps Kissy fish, accompanies her through lonely dives, and becomes one of the familiar companions in Bond’s concealed life on Kuro Island. His recurring presence links those two periods: the fishing trips Bond first joins as a visitor and the island routine he later inhabits without remembering who he was.