Akiko Wakabayashi

Akiko Wakabayashi born December 13 1939 in Ōta Tokyo is a Japanese actress best known in Englishspeaking countries for her role as Bond girl Aki in the 1967 James Bond movie You Only Live Twice Prior to this she made many movies in her native Japan especially Toho Studios monster movies such as Dagora the Space Monster and Ghidorah the ThreeHeaded Monster both of which were also released under various other titles When production of You Only Live Twice began Wakabayashi was originally slated to play the role of Kissy Suzuki whilst her costar Mie Hama played Suki one of Tiger Tanakas top agents When learning English proved to be a major hurdle to Hama the women switched roles with Hama now playing the smaller part of Kissy and Wakabayashi playing the larger part of Suki Wakabayashi as Aki in the movie You Only Live Twice At her suggestion the character of Suki was renamed to Aki This is probably partly becausecitation needed in 1966 Woody Allen took the Japanese action film International Secret Police Key of Keys in which both Mie Hama and Wakabayashi starred reedited redubbed replotted and renamed it Whats Up Tiger Lily In the film Wakabayashis character was Suki Yaki whereas her You Only Live Twice costar Hama played Teri Yaki Wakabayashi made only one more film and a guest TV appearance before disappearing from both the big and small screen In an interview in GFAN magazine No 76 Wakabayashi said she retired from acting due to injuries sustained while making a movie Description above from the Wikipedia article Akiko Wakabayashi licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia