007’s Newest Gimmick

FOR A TIME, it appeared as if half the karate dojo in Tokyo had been emptied of their best black belts. The karatemen all seemed to be collected for the latest James Bond epic You Only Live Twice.

It wasn’t so much that the senior karatemen — and experts in judo and other Japanese martial arts — were starstruck as the fact that the pay was pretty good. They had been hired as extras to impersonate, of all things, ninja — Japan’s famous professional spies of several centuries ago who have been revived for this movie. More than 100 black belts at a time were used on the sets in Japan, and a number were later flown to London, where some 300 ninja actors were used.