The Master of Go

by Yusanari Kawabata

  "Oh? Exactly twice what I am. And you're less than half my age."

  "I've turned thirty, sir. Thirty is a bad age. In the days when you were good enough to give me lessons I was thinner." His thoughts turned to his boyhood. "I was sick a great deal in those days. Your lady was very kind to me."

  From talk of the hot springs of Shinshū, Mrs. Otaké's home, the conversation moved to domestic matters. Otaké had married at twenty-three, when he had reached the Fifth Rank. He had three children and kept three disciples in his house, which thus contained ten persons.

  His oldest, a girl of six, had learned the game from watching him.

  "I gave her a nine-stone handicap the other day. I've kept a chart of the game."

  "Very remarkable," the Master too had to admit.

  "And my second, the four-year-old, knows all about putting stones in check. I suppose we can't tell yet whether they have talent, but there might be possibilities."

  The others seemed uncomfortable.

  Apparently Otaké, one of the eminences of the Go world, was thinking seriously that if his two daughters, six and four, showed promise, he would make them professionals like himself. It is said that talent in Go appears at about ten, and that if a child does not begin his studies by that age there is no hope for him. Yet Otaké's words struck me as odd. Did they tell, perhaps, of youth, of a thirty-year-old who was a captive of Go but had not yet been bled by it? His household must be a happy one, I thought.

  The Master spoke of his own house. It stood on something under a quarter of an acre in Setagaya, but since the house itself covered almost a third of the land, the garden was somewhat cramped. He would like to sell and move to a house with even slightly more spacious grounds. For the Master, family meant himself and his wife, who was here beside him. He no longer kept disciples in his house.

  5

  When the Master was released from St. Luke's, the match, recessed for three months, was resumed at the Dankōen in Itō. On the first day there were only five plays, from Black 101 to Black 105. A dispute arose over scheduling the next session. Otaké rejected the modified rules the Master proposed for reasons of health, and said that he would forfeit the game. The dispute was more stubbornly complicated than a similar disagreement had been at Hakoné.

  Tense days followed one another as the contestants and managers remained "sealed in" at the Dankōen. One day the Master drove to Kawana for a change of air. It was most remarkable for a man who hated such excursions to venture forth on his own. I went with him, as did Murashima of the Fifth Rank, who was one of his disciples, and the young girl, herself a professional Go player, who was keeping the records.

  But it seemed wrong that, having arrived at the Kawana Hotel, the Master had nothing to do except sit in the vast Western-style lounge and drink orange pekoe.

  Glass-enclosed, the semicircular lounge thrust forward into the garden. It was like an observatory or a sun room. To the left and right of the broad lawn were golf courses, the Fuji course and the Oshima course. Beyond the lawn and the golf courses was the sea.

  I had long been fond of the bright, open view from Kawana. I had thought I would show it to the gloomy old man, and I watched to see his reaction. He sat in silence, as if not even aware of the view before him. He did not look at the other guests. There was no change in his expression and he had nothing to say about the scenery or about the hotel; and so, as always, his wife was his spokesman and prompter. She praised the scene and invited him to agree. He neither nodded assent nor offered objection.

  Wanting him to be in the bright sunlight, I invited him into the garden.

  "Yes, do let's go out," said his wife. "You won't have to worry about getting a chill, and it's sure to make you feel better."

  She was helping me. The Master did not seem to find the request an imposition.

  It was one of those warm late-autumn days when the island of Oshima lies in a mist. Kites skimmed and dipped over the warm, calm sea. At the far edge of the lawn was a row of pines, framing the sea in green. Several pairs of newlyweds were standing along the line between the grass and the sea. Perhaps because of the brightness and expansiveness of- the scene, they seemed unusually self-possessed for newlyweds. From afar, against the pines and the sea, the kimonos seemed fresher and brighter, I thought, than they would have from near at hand. People who came to Kawana belonged to the affluent classes.

  "Newlyweds, all of them, I suppose," I said to the Master, feeling an envy that approached resentment.

  "They must be bored," he muttered.

  Long after, I remembered the expressionless voice.

  I would have liked to stroll on the lawn, to sit on it; but the Master stood fixed to one spot, and I could only stand there beside him.

  We had the car return by way of Lake Ippeki. The little lake was surprisingly beautiful, deep and quiet in the afternoon sun of late autumn. The Master too got out and briefly gazed at it.

  Pleased with the brightness of the Kawana Hotel, I took Otaké there the next morning. I was being fatherly. I hoped the place might do a little toward untying the emotional knots. I invited Yawata, the secretary of the Go Association, and Sunada of the Nichinichi Shimbun to go with us. For lunch we had sukiyaki in a rustic cottage on the hotel grounds. We stayed until evening. I was well acquainted with the place, having gone there by myself and with a group of dancers as well as at the invitation of Okura Kishichiro, the founder of the Okura enterprises. The dispute continued after our return from Kawana. Even bystanders like myself felt constrained to mediate. The match was finally resumed on November 25.

  The Master had a large oval brazier of paulownia beside him and an oblong brazier behind him, on which he kept water boiling. At the urging of Otaké, he wrapped himself in a muffler, and as further protection against the cold he had on a sort of over-cloak, which seemed to be of blanket cloth with a knitted lining. In his room he was never without it. He had a slight fever this morning, he said.

  "And what is your normal temperature, sir?" asked Otaké as he sat down at the board.

  "It runs between ninety-six and ninety-seven," said the Master quietly, as if savoring the words. "It never goes as high as ninety-seven."

  On another occasion, asked his height, he said: "I was just under five feet when I had my draft examination. Then I grew a half inch and was over five feet. You lose height as you get older, and now it's exactly five feet."

  "He has a body like an undernourished child," said the doctor when the Master fell ill at Hakoné. "There's no flesh at all on his calves. You wonder how he manages to carry himself. I can't prescribe medicine in ordinary doses. I have to give him what a thirteen or fourteen-year-old might take."

  6

  That the Master seemed to grow larger when he seated himself before the Go board had to do of course with the power and prestige of his art, the rewards of long training and discipline; but his trunk was disproportionately long. He also had a large, longish face, on which the individual features were bold. The strong jaw was especially conspicuous. These various characteristics were apparent in the pictures I took of the dead face.

  I was most apprehensive through the days when they were being developed. I always had my developing and printing done at the Nonomiya studio in Kudan. When I delivered the film I described the circumstances, and asked that the film be treated with particular care.

  After the Kōyō Festival I returned home for a time and then went again to Atami. I gave my wife strict instructions that if the pictures of the dead face were received in Kamakura she was to send them immediately to the Juraku in Atami, and that she was neither to look at them herself nor to let anyone else see them. I thought that if my amateur photographs showed the Master to disadvantage I would not wish to do injury to his memory by having people see them or even hear of them. I thought that if they turned out badly I would burn them without showing them to the Master's widow or disciples. It was not at all unlikely that I had failed, since the shutter of my camera was defective.r />
  I had come at a telephone summons from my wife when, with other participants in the Kōyō Festival, I was having a lunch of turkey sukiyaki in the plum orchard. She told me that the widow wanted me to take pictures of the dead man. After my visit that morning, it had occurred to me that, if the widow wanted photographs or a death mask, I myself might take responsibility for the former, and I had told my wife, who called later with condolences, to pass the message on. The widow had replied that she did not want a death mask, but would appreciate photographs.

  But when the time came I quite lost confidence. It was a heavy duty I had taken upon myself. And the shutter of my camera had a way of catching, and the chances of failure seemed great. Remembering that a photographer had been brought from Tokyo to cover the festival, I asked him to photograph the dead Master. The widow and the others might object if I were suddenly to introduce a photographer who had been nothing to the Master, but it was certain that the pictures would be better than any I myself might take. Objections came instead from the organisers of the festival: they had brought the man for the festival, and, it would be a great inconvenience to have him dispatched elsewhere. They were of course right. My feelings about the Master had been mine alone, and I was unconsciously at odds with the other participants in the festival. I asked the photographer to look at my camera. He said that I should open it to voluntary timing and use my hand as a shutter. He changed the film for me. I went to the Urokoya in a cab.

  The night doors were closed in the room where the Master had been laid, and the light was on. The widow and her younger brother went in with me.

  "Is it too dark?" asked the brother. "Shall we open the doors ?"

  I took perhaps ten pictures. I was careful that the shutter did not catch, and I tried the technique of using my hand as a shutter. I would have liked to take pictures from all sides and angles, but out of respect for the dead man I could not bring myself to wander through the room. I took all my pictures from a single kneeling position.

  Presently they came from my house in Kamakura. My wife had written on the back of the envelope: "These have just come from the Nonomiya. I have not opened them. You are to be at the shrine office by five on the fourth." The last message had to do with the spring rites at the Hachiman Shrine in Kamakura. Kamakura writers born under the sign of the zodiac under which this year fell were to perform the exorcism.{4}

  I opened the envelope, and immediately was the captive of the dead face. The pictures were a success. They were of a man asleep, and at the same time they had the quiet of death about them.

  I had knelt at the side of the dead Master, who lay on his back, and so I was looking up at him from an angle. The absence of a pillow was the mark of death, and the face was tilted ever so slightly upward, so the strong jaw and the large mouth, just perceptibly open, stood out even more prominently. The powerful nose seemed almost oppressively large. There was profound sorrow in the wrinkles at the closed eyes and the heavily shaded forehead.

  The light through the half-opened night doors came from the feet, and the light from the ceiling struck the lower part of the face; and, since the head tilted slightly backward, the forehead was in shadow. The light struck from the jaw over the cheeks, and thence toward the rise of the eyebrows and hollow eyes to the bridge of the nose. Looking more closely, I saw that the lower lip was in shadow and the upper lighted, and between them, in the deep shadow of the mouth, a single upper tooth could be seen. White hairs stood out in the short mustache. There were two large moles on the right cheek, the farther from the camera. I had caught their shadows, and the shadows too of the veins at the temples and forehead. Horizontal wrinkles crossed the forehead. Only a single tuft of the short-cropped hair above caught the light. The Master had stiff, coarse hair.

  7

  The two large moles were on the right cheek, and the right eyebrow was extraordinarily long. The far end drew an arc over the eyelid, and reached even to the line of the closed eye. Why should the camera have made it seem so long? The eyebrow and the two moles seemed to add a gently pleasing melancholy to the dead face.

  The long eyebrow brought twinges of sorrow. This was the reason.

  When my wife and I visited the Urokoya on January 16, two days before the Master's death, his wife said: "Yes. We were going to mention it as soon as these good people came. Do you remember? We were going to mention your eyebrow." She cast a prompting glance at the Master, then turned to us. "I am sure it was on the twelfth. Rather a warm day, I believe. We thought it would be right for the trip to Atami if he were to have a good shave, and so we called a barber we've known for years. My husband went out into the sunlight on the veranda for his shave. He seemed to remember something. He said to the barber that he had one very long hair in his left eyebrow. It was a sign of long life, he said, and the barber was not to touch it. The barber stopped work and said yes, there it was, this one right here. A hair of good luck, a sign of long life. He would indeed be careful. My husband turned to me and said that Mr. Uragami had written about the hair in his newspaper articles. Mr. Uragami had a remarkable eye for details, he said. He had not noticed it himself until he read about it in the paper. He was overcome with admiration."

  Though the Master was silent as always, a flicker crossed his face as if it had caught the shadow of a passing bird. I was uncomfortable.

  But I did not dream that the Master would be dead two days after the story of the mark of longevity he had asked the barber to spare.

  It was a trifling matter, that I should have noticed the hair and written about it; but I had noticed it at a difficult moment, and it had come as a sort of rescue. I had written thus of the day's session at Hakoné:{5}

  The Master's wife is staying at the inn, ministering to her aged husband. Mrs. Otaké, mother of three children, the oldest of them six, commutes between Hiratsuka and Hakoné. The strain on the two wives is painfully apparent to the onlooker. On August 10, for instance, during the play at Hakoné, when the Master was desperately ill, the faces of the two women seemed drained of blood, their expressions were tense and drawn.

  The Master's wife had not been at the Master's side during play; but today she sat gazing intently from the next room. She was not watching the play. She was watching the ailing player, and she did not take her eyes from him all through the session.

  Mrs. Otaké has never come into the room during play. Today she was in the hall, now standing still, now walking up and down. Finally, the suspense too much for her, it seemed, she went into the managers' office.

  "Otaké is still thinking about his next play?"

  "Yes. It's a difficult moment."

  "It's never easy to concentrate, but it would be easier if he had slept last night."

  Otaké had worried the whole night through about whether to continue the game with the ailing Master. He had not slept at all, and had come sleepless to the session that morning. It was Black's turn at half past twelve, the hour specified for breaking off the session, and after almost an hour and a half Otaké still had not decided upon his sealed play. There was no question of lunch. Mrs. Otaké of course found it difficult to sit quietly in her room. She too had passed a sleepless night.

  The only one who slept was Mr. Otaké, Junior. He is a splendid young man now in his eighth month, so splendid that if someone were to inquire of me about the nature and the spirit of Mr. Otaké, Senior, I would want to show him the child, a veritable embodiment of that spirit. It has been one of those days when a person finds it impossible to face an adult, and for me this little Mōmōtaro has been a savior.

  Today I discovered for the first time a white hair about an inch long in the Master's eyebrow. Standing out from the swollen-eyed, heavy-veined face, it too somehow came as a savior.

  From the veranda outside the players' room, which was ruled by a sort of diabolic tension, I glanced out into the garden, beaten down by the powerful summer sun, and saw a girl of the modern sort insouciantly feeding the carp. I felt as if I were looking at some fre
ak. I could scarcely believe that we belonged to the same world.

  The faces of both the Master's wife and Mrs. Otaké were drawn and pale and wasted. As always, the Master's wife left the room when play began, but almost immediately she was back again, and she sat gazing at the Master from the next room. Onoda of the Sixth Rank was there too, his eyes closed and his head bowed. The face of the writer Muramatsu Shōfū, who had been among the observers, wore a pitying expression. Even the talkative Otaké was silent. He seemed unable to look up at the Master's face.

  The sealed play, White 90, was opened. Inclining his head to the left and to the right, the Master played White 92, cutting the diagonal black stones. White 94 was played after a long period of meditation, an hour and nine minutes. Now closing his eyes, now looking aside, occasionally bowing as if to control a spell of nausea, the Master seemed in great distress. His figure was without the usual grandeur. Perhaps because I was watching against the light, the outlines of his face seemed blurred, ghostlike. The room was quiet, but with a different quietness. The stones striking the board - Black 95, White 96, Black 97 - had an unearthly quality about them, as of echoing in a chasm.

  The Master deliberated for more than half an hour before playing White 98. His eyes blinking, his mouth slightly open, he fanned himself as if fanning up the embers in the deepest reaches of his being. Was such grim concentration necessary, I wondered.

  Yasunaga of the Fourth Rank came in. Just inside the room, he knelt down to make his formal greetings. His bow was solemnly respectful and diffident. Neither contestant noticed. Each time one or the other seemed about to look his way, Yasunaga repeated the bow. There was nothing else for him to do. Demonic forces seemed lost in horrid battle.

  Immediately after White 98 the youth who was keeping records announced that a minute of play remained. Then it was twelve thirty, time for the sealed play.