The Final Yen by R. Sebastian Bennett

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Final Yen by R. Sebastian Bennett Liana V. Andreasen (bio) the final yen R. Sebastian Bennett Milford House Press https://www.sunburypress.com/collections/r-sebastian-bennett/products/the-final-yen?variant=39379886964829 177 pages; Print, $16.95 World War II has not ended. Not quite, not yet, and it probably never will. At least that is the strong impression we are left with if we pay attention to the underlying tensions in R. Sebastian Bennett's novel The Final Yen. It is a story told through the perspective of an American who learns, down to the most minute detail, what it takes to be successful in the Japanese business world of the late 1980s. This is a time when the economic competition (tempered by collaboration) between the two world powers has reached a peak, especially by means of the car industry. The Final Yen reflects precisely on this period through the eyes of the American narrator, leading us through a labyrinth of intrigue, connections, and considerations toward a key moment that takes place in a barbershop. There, the unspoken, unfinished war between the two countries tragicomically unmasks the opponents when an elderly barber nearly waterboards the protagonist in shampoo and shaving water. In that moment, half a century is erased, while "Hiroshima!" and "Pearl Harbor!" echo in the narrator's head. What makes the novel not at all what one might expect to be a tedium of technicalities from the Japanese business world is that at no point does the narrator become the dreaded "salaryman"; he never completely buys into [End Page 59] what most Americans consider an unbearably normative set of roles and behaviors, which he is courting fiercely. In fact, the most striking feature of this book is its most intriguing: in this world where the narrator attempts to adapt and succeed, everything is a game. From saying hello and good-bye to eating, to making deals, to listening or not listening to a manager or a boss, to taking the train, to acquiring drinking buddies, there is no aspect of Japanese life (at least for an American, or this American) that is not inscribed within norms of a game whose limits he constantly pushes, to see just how sturdy the walls of his environment are. We have the feeling that the narrator is a chess player constantly weighing his next move and wondering what the opponent plans to do. The book, therefore, reads like a game of chess, where the protagonist is the only player whose perspective we understand with great clarity, while the opponent/antagonist is an entire society that sends people, like chess pieces, to challenge him or honor him with a temporary win. What makes this game even more compelling is that the narrator not only shows us the good and the bad of this world that is unfamiliar yet fascinating to most American readers, but that he also lets us in on every calculation, every potential or real move he makes. We witness a mind constantly at work, weighing the risks, guessing the others' intentions, as he pushes himself to the limits and almost never seems to catch his breath because of how fast paced this business world is. Yet no matter how much he masters the game, it seems that something still escapes him, and toward the end of the book he will be faced with a difficult choice that might erase all his efforts. He will have to weigh the value of the game itself and whether it is, or ever was, worth playing as soon as he realizes that it would not be him playing anymore, if he becomes truly successful at it, but a new version of himself, someone with whom he becomes increasingly uncomfortable. The first chapter (belonging much further in the sequence of events) presents us with the game of sexualized success: an evening of drinking in the pleasure quarter, more specifically at a hostesses' club, where the narrator is trying to catch up on the game and not make the wrong move: "I wasn't sure—was Ono just toying with words? Suggesting a possible rendezvous with Hana? I dodged the question...