Kissy Suzuki Rescues and Hides Bond

Kissy Suzuki Rescues and Hides Bond is the turning point in which Kissy saves James Bond from the sea after the destruction of Death Castle, then protects him by giving him a new identity and concealing him on Kuro Island. Bond survives, but his memory is gone; Kissy’s rescue becomes both a practical act of care and an effort to keep him in the island life they had shared before his mission. The secret refuge gives him time to heal, while leaving open the possibility that memory will return and take him away.

The Rescue from the Sea

When Kissy sees a black-winged figure in a kimono fall from the castle wall into the sea, she recognizes Bond and swims the two hundred yards from the wall to reach him. The impact has knocked the breath from him, and the pain in his head has nearly extinguished his will to live. Once he surfaces, the sea itself renews his struggle; he fights to free himself from the kimono. Disoriented, he mistakes Kissy for Ernst Stavro Blofeld and tries to strike her. Even when she identifies herself, he has no memory of her or of anything beyond the face of the enemy he wants to attack.

Kissy’s first task is to get him away from the water and bring him to safety. Bond cannot follow her: instead, he swims in widening circles like a wounded animal. She stops him, speaks softly, and takes him under the arms, cradling his head against her as she uses a backward leg-stroke to tow him. The rescue takes her half a mile through currents, with the moon and occasional glances over her shoulder as her bearings. She finally hauls him out at her cove and collapses beside him on the flat stones. The scene reverses Bond’s apparent defeat in the water into survival, but his return to life is not a return to himself.

A New Identity and a Hidden Shelter

After Bond is sick and wakes with a blank, glazed stare, he cannot say who he is, how he arrived, or where he is. He remembers only a man’s face, which he believes was dead and belonged to a bad man. Kissy recognizes the opportunity and tells him that she is his lover, that his name is Taro Todoroki, and that they live on the island and fish together. She explains his wounds as the result of falling while climbing the cliffs for seagulls’ eggs, giving his injuries a harmless local cause in place of the violence at Death Castle.

Bond accepts her offered hands and staggers to his feet. Rather than taking him to the Suzuki house, Kissy leads him past it, uphill through dwarf maples and camellia bushes, and into the dry-floored Cave Behind the Kuro Island Shrine. She tells him that this is where they live and that she will bring their bedding, food, and a doctor. He falls asleep almost at once. Kissy hurries back down the mountain, determined to keep him; before dawn, she gathers milk, futon bedding, her father’s best kimono, and Bond’s washing things, deliberately excluding anything that might remind him of his former life.

The Island’s Agreement to Conceal Him

Kissy seeks the Shinto priest’s blessing and asks him to help her keep Bond on Kuro. The priest already knows that the supposed spawn of the devil and his wife are dead, and that Death Castle has been destroyed as foretold by the Six Guardians. Kissy tells him that Bond is badly wounded and remembers nothing. She proposes that the islanders answer inquiries with Shiran-kao, feigning ignorance and claiming that Taro Todoroki swam to the mainland and was never heard from again. She promises not to hinder Bond if he eventually chooses to leave, but asks to care for him in the meantime.

The priest agrees to do what he can, while setting conditions: Bond must remain discreet and must not be seen by outsiders until the island is quiet again. He arranges for the doctor to treat him in the cave and says that, later, Bond may move back into Kissy’s parents’ house. The doctor finds a severe swelling from Bond’s fall into the oubliette and a separate bullet cut across his head, as well as a cut across his ribs. He cleans and dresses the wounds, judges that Bond will live, but warns that damage to the brain’s temporal lobe may leave his memory absent for months or even years. Although an X-ray in Fukuoka would normally be advisable, the priest’s order keeps Bond on the island. The doctor gives Kissy detailed nursing instructions and says Bond should not be moved for at least a week.

Recovery, Routine, and the Risk of Return

The concealment is tested repeatedly. Police come from Fukuoka, an official named Tanaka arrives from Tokyo, and later a huge man claiming to be from Australia proves especially difficult for Kissy to shake off. The islanders maintain their expressionless Shiran-kao, and Kuro keeps its secret. As Bond’s body mends, Kissy takes him on walks at night and swims with him in the cove. She tells him the history of the Ama and Kuro, answers his questions about the world beyond the island with care, and plays with him and David.

Winter brings a change in the island’s work. The Ama stay ashore to mend nets and boats and tend smallholdings on the mountainside. Bond returns to the house and makes himself useful with carpentry and odd jobs, while learning Japanese from Kissy. His eyes lose their glazed look, but remain remote; at night, he dreams of white people, great cities, and half-remembered faces from a different world. Kissy tells him that these are meaningless nightmares, and he gradually accepts the stone-and-wood house and the sea horizon as the limits of his life. She keeps him away from Kuro’s south coast, fearing that when fishing resumes at the end of May, sight of the great black wall across the straits will bring his memory flooding back. Her refuge therefore remains fragile: Bond has been rescued and sheltered, but the life Kissy has built around his amnesia depends on keeping the past out of view.