Vladivostok is the destination James Bond chooses when a single word on a scrap of newspaper stirs his lost past. In the story, the city matters less as a place he has reached than as a point of orientation: it turns his vague sense of a former life connected with Russia into a journey he intends to make, and sets that search against his life with Kissy Suzuki on Kuro Island.

The Name and Its Route

Bond encounters the name on a crumpled square of newspaper taken from the spike in the small lavatory. Kissy Suzuki had torn the squares herself and discarded any containing English words, keeping them from revealing anything to Bond. The surviving scrap nevertheless carries the word he notices and asks her to explain.

Kissy describes a route beginning with the mailboat to Fukuoka, where she will put Bond on a train and provide money and directions. From there, she says, he can travel from Hokkaido to Sakhalin and make his way to Vladivostok, a great port south of Sakhalin. In her account, this itinerary makes the far-off destination seem practically reachable, while her warning that Russians are unfriendly people marks the journey as risky.

A Direction Back to the Past

The name immediately gives shape to Bond’s suspicion that his forgotten life was connected with Russia. He tells Kissy that he feels he had much to do with the country and hopes that going to Vladivostok may awaken further memories, allowing him to work backward toward the person he was before coming to Kuro Island. The city thus functions as a clue and a proposed method of recovery: Bond cannot yet recall his past, but he can follow the fragment that has surfaced.

Departure and Separation

Kissy agrees to help, despite the promise she remembers making to the priest. Her response accompanies a painful change in their shared life: she has been wondering when to tell Bond that she is going to have a baby, while he now plans to leave in search of his former identity. When Bond assumes that a fisherman from Kuro Island would be safe among Russians, Kissy’s heart chokes her; she walks down to the boat and waits in her usual place in the stern. Vladivostok remains, at this point, an intended destination rather than an accomplished arrival, but the decision to go already places the search for Bond’s past in tension with the life he has found with Kissy.