The Master of Go

by Yusanari Kawabata

  "A very delicate game. It is going to be very close."

  It had been recessed in its early middle stages, and the Master himself was a contestant; and it was not for a rival player to predict the outcome. Yet what I wanted were comments upon the manner of play, given a sense of mood and style - an appraisal of the game as a work of art.

  "It is splendid," he replied. "In a word, it is an important game for both of them, and they both are playing carefully. They are giving a great deal of thought to every move. I can't see a single mistake or oversight on the part of either. You aren't often treated to such a game. I think it's splendid."

  "Oh ?" I was somewhat dissatisfied. "Even I can see that Black is playing a tight game. Is White too?"

  "Yes, the Master is playing very carefully, very tightly. When one side plays a tight game the other must too, or he will find his positions crumbling. They have plenty of time, and it's a very important game."

  It was a bland, harmless appraisal, and the appraisal I had hoped for was not forthcoming. Perhaps it had been bold of him even to describe the game as a close one.

  But since I was in a state of great excitement over a game I had studied intently through all its early phases, I had hoped for something more profound, something touching on the spiritual. Saitō Ryūtarō of the magazine Bungei Shunjū was convalescing at a near-by inn. We stopped to see him. He had until recently been in the room next to Wu's.

  "Sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep I would hear stones clicking. It was a little hair-raising, actually." And he remarked upon the extraordinary dignity with which Wu saw visitors to the door.

  Shortly after the Master's retirement match, I was invited with Wu to Shimogamo Springs in South Izu, and I learned about dreams of Go. Sometimes, I was told, a player discovers a brilliant play in his sleep. Sometimes he remembers a part of the configuration after he awakens.

  "I often have a feeling when I'm at the board that I have seen a game before, and I wonder if it might have been in a dream."

  His most frequent adversary in dreams, said Wu, was Otaké of the Seventh Rank.

  30

  "The game has to be recessed," I have heard that the Master said before he went into St. Luke's, "but I don't want outsiders looking at an unfinished game and saying that White is doing well and Black is doing all right too."

  It was the sort of thing the Master would have said; but there are probably shifts in the tides of battle that are quite impossible for an outsider to understand.

  Apparently the Master was optimistic. Once after the match was over he remarked to Goi of the Nichinichi and myself: "When I went into the hospital I didn't think White was in at all a bad position. I did think some odd things were happening, but I was not really worried."

  Black 99 "peeped in"{33} upon a White triangle, and with White 100, the last play before he was hospitalized, the Master joined his stones. Afterwards, in his review of the game, he said that if he had not so joined his stones but rather sought to control the Black formation to the right of the board and prevent an incursion into White territory, "the outlook would not have been such as to permit sanguineness on Black's part." He seems to have been satisfied with the early course of the game. The fact that he had been able to play White 48 on a "star point" and so to "control the passes" in the opening stages "meant what anyone must concede to be an ideal White formation." It followed, he said, that "Black 47, giving up the strategic point, was too conservative a play," which could not "evade charges of a certain tepidness."

  Otaké, however, in his own reflections, said that if he had not played as he did there would still have been openings for White in the vicinity, and these he was loath to permit. Wu's commentary agreed with Otaké's. Black 47 was the proper play, he said, and left Black with massive thickness.

  I can remember gasping when Otaké closed his lines at Black 47 and White took the strategic star point with White 48. It was less that I felt Otaké's style of play in Black 47 than that I felt the formidable resolve with which he had entered the match. He sent White back to the third line and plunged in to build his own massive wall; and I felt absolute commitment. He had taken his position. He was not going to lose the game and he was not going to be deceived by White's subtle stratagems.

  If at White 100, in the middle phase of the game, the outcome seemed uncertain, then Black was being out-played by White; but the point may have been that Otaké was playing a strong but careful game. Black had the greater thickness and Black territory was secure, and the time was at hand for Otaké's own characteristic turn to the offensive, for the gnawing into enemy formations at which he was so adept.

  Otaké of the Seventh Rank has been called a reincarnation of Honnimbō Jōwa.{34} Jōwa was the great master of the aggressive game. Honnimbō Shūsai too has been likened to Jōwa. The essence of Jōwa's game was to build strong walls, move forward into open battle, and throw everything into a frontal assault. It was a grand and turbulent style of Go, even a gaudy style, replete with crises and rich in shifts and variations, very popular among amateur fanciers of the game. The amateur audience for this the Master's final game therefore expected power against power, violent clash upon violent clash, until the board had become one glorious entanglement. That expectation could scarcely have been betrayed more thoroughly.

  Otaké seemed cautious of challenging the Master at his own game. His initial object to limit the Master's freedom of motion and avoid difficult entanglements over a broad front, he set about shaping his ranks after patterns he had made peculiarly his own. Allowing the Master a strategic point, he was all the while buttressing his own walls. What may at first sight have seemed passive was in fact a strong undercurrent of aggression and an unshakable confidence. What may have seemed mere tenacity had a surging power. True to his own uncompromising aims he would from time to time launch forth violently upon the offensive.

  Yet however careful Otaké might be about keeping his ranks in order, there should somewhere along the way have been a chance for the Master to lay down a serious challenge. The Master initially staked out broad claims in two of the corners. In the upper left corner, where Otaké had responded to White 18 with Black 19 at "three-by-three," C-17, this the last match for the sixty-four-year-old Master was following the newer pattern; and from that corner a storm presently blew up. There if anywhere would have been the spot for the Master, had he chosen, to be difficult. But perhaps because the match was so important to him, he seemed to prefer the cleaner, less involved sort of game. Down into these middle phases the Master replied to Otaké's overtures; and as he moved ahead with what had certain elements of the one-man performance about it, Otaké found himself drawn into a close, delicate contest.

  Such a match was probably inevitable, granted Black's play, and so boldness gave way to a concern for every possible point - which development might in the final analysis be taken as a success for White. The Master was not pursuing a brilliant plan of his own, nor was he taking advantage of bad play. It perhaps told of his age and experience, the fact that like the flow of water or the drifting of clouds a White formation quietly took shape over the lower reaches of the board in response to careful and steady pressure from Black; and so the game became a close one. The Master's powers had not waned with age, nor had illness damaged them.

  31

  "I left on July 8, eighty whole days ago," said Shūsai the Master, back in his Setagaya house upon his release from St. Luke's. "I've been away all through the summer and on into the fall."

  He strolled a few blocks that day, his longest venture forth in two months. His legs were weak from the months in bed. Two weeks after he left the hospital he was able, with considerable effort, to sit on his heels in the formal manner.

  "I've been trained to the proper way for fifty years now. Actually I've found it easier to sit on my heels than to sit cross-legged. But after all that time in bed I couldn't manage any more. At meals I would cross my legs under the tablecloth. No, it wa
sn't really that I sat cross-legged. I'd throw these skinny legs of mine out in front of me. I'd never done that before in my life. I'll have to get used to long bouts of sitting on my heels or I won't be able to go on with the game. I've been working on it as best I can, but I have to admit I still have trouble." The season had come for horse racing, of which he was so fond. He had to be careful of his heart, but finally he could contain himself no longer.

  "I thought up a good excuse. I said I had to give my legs a trial, and went out to the Fuchū track. Somehow I'm happier when I'm at the races. I felt better about my game. But I was exhausted when I got home. I suppose the core isn't very solid any more. I went again and could see no reason at all why I shouldn't be playing. I decided today that we could begin on the eighteenth."

  These remarks were taken down for publication by Kurosaki, a reporter for the Nichinichi. The "today" was November 9. Play would thus be resumed some three months after the last Hakoné session, August 14. Since winter was approaching, the Dankōen in Itō was chosen as the new game site.

  The Master and his wife, escorted by a disciple, Murashima of the Fifth Rank, and by Yawata, secretary of the Go Association, arrived at the Dankōen on November 15, three days in advance of play. Otaké of the Seventh Rank arrived on November 16.

  The tangerine groves were beautiful in the hills, and down at the coast the bitter oranges were turning gold. It was cloudy and chilly on the fifteenth, and on the sixteenth there was a light rain. The radio reported snow here and there over the country. But the seventeenth was one of those warm late-autumn Izu days when the air is sweet and soft. The Master walked to the Otonashi Shrine and Jōnoiké Pond. The expedition was unusual. The Master had never been fond of walking.

  On the evening before the first Hakoné session he had called a barber to the inn, and at the Dankōen too, on the seventeenth, he had himself shaved. As at Hakoné, his wife stood behind him supporting his head.

  "Do you dye hair?" he asked the barber. His eyes were turned quietly on the afternoon garden.

  He had had his white hair dyed before leaving Tokyo. It may have seemed rather unlike the Master to dye his hair in preparation for battle, but perhaps he was bringing himself together after his collapse.

  He had always clipped his hair short, and there was something amusingly incongruous about the long hair carefully parted and even dyed black. The Master's tawny skin and strong cheekbones emerged from the lather.

  Though not as pale and swollen as at Hakoné, it was still not a healthy face.

  I had gone to the Master's room immediately upon my arrival.

  "Yes," he said, absently as always. "I was examined at St. Luke's the day before I came. Dr. Inada had his doubts. My heart still isn't right, he said, and there's a little water on the pleurae. And then the doctor here at Itō has found something in my bronchial tubes. I suppose I'm catching cold."

  "Oh?" I could think of nothing to say.

  "I'm not over the first ailment and I get a second and a third. Three seems to be the grand total at the moment."

  "Please don't tell Mr. Otaké, sir." People from the Association and the Nichinichi were present.

  "Why?" The Master was puzzled.

  "He'll start being difficult again if he finds out."

  "And so we shouldn't keep secrets from him."

  "It would be better not to tell him," agreed the Master's wife. "You'll only put him off. It will be Hakoné all over again."

  The Master was silent.

  He spoke openly of his condition to anyone who asked.

  He had stopped both the tobacco and the evening drink of which he was so fond. At Hakoné he had almost never gone out, but now he forced himself to walk and to eat hearty meals. Perhaps dyeing his hair was another manifestation of his resolve.

  I asked whether at the end of the match he meant to winter in Atami or Itō or return to St. Luke's.

  He replied, as if taking me into his confidence: "The question is whether I last that long."

  And he said that his having come so far was probably a matter of "vagueness."

  32

  The mats in the game room were changed the night before the first Itō session. The room had the smell of new mats when we came in on the morning of the eighteenth. Kosugi of the Fourth Rank had gone to the Naraya for the famous board used during the Hakoné sessions. At their places, the Master and Otaké uncovered their bowls of stones. The black stones were coated over with summer mildew. With the help of the desk clerk and the maids they were cleaned on the spot.

  It was ten thirty when White 100 was opened.

  Black 99 had "peeped" upon the White triangle, and White 100 joined the threatened White pieces. The last session at Hakoné had consisted of the one sealed play.

  "Even considering that I was very ill and that White 100 was my last play before going into the hospital," said the Master in his comments upon the game, "it was a somewhat ill-considered play. I should have ignored the peep and pressed ahead at S-8 and so secured the White territory off toward the lower right. Black had threatened, to be sure, but there was no immediate need for him to cut my line, and even if he had I would not have been in great difficulty. Had I used White 100 to protect my own ground, the outlook would not have been such as to permit sanguineness on Black's part."

  Yet White 100 was not a bad play, and one could not say that it weakened the White position. Otaké had assumed that the Master would respond to the "peep" by linking his stones, and to us bystanders the linking seemed quite natural.

  One would imagine that though White 100 was a sealed play Otaké had for three months known what it would be. Now, inevitably, Black 101 must strike into White territory toward the lower right. To us amateurs it seemed that Otaké had a natural play, a space removed on the "S" line from Black 87. Yet he still had not played when noon came and the recess for lunch.

  We were surprised to see the Master out in the garden during the recess. Plum branches and pine needles glistened in the sun, and there were white yatsudé flowers and yellow, daisylike silverleaf. On the camellia below Otaké's room a single blossom with crinkled petals had come out. The Master gazed at it.

  At the afternoon session, a pine cast its shadow on the paper doors of the game room. A white-eye chirped outside. There were large carp in the pond. The carp at the Naraya in Hakoné had been of various hues. These were the natural gray.

  Even the Master seemed bored. It was taking Otaké a very long time to play. The Master closed his eyes and might have been asleep.

  "A difficult spot," muttered Yasunaga of the Fourth Rank. He sat cross-legged with one foot drawn up on the other thigh. His eyes too were closed.

  What was so difficult about it? I began to suspect that Otaké was deliberately holding back from the obvious play, the jump to S-7. The managers too were impatient. Otaké said in his comments after the match that he had debated whether to "swim" at S-8 or jump to S-7. The Master too said in his review of the game that it was difficult to judge the relative merits of the two plays. Yet I thought it most odd that Otaké should use three and a half hours for the first play after the long recess. The sun was low and the lights had been turned on when finally he made his decision. It took the Master only five minutes to play White 102 in the space over which Black had jumped. Otaké took forty-two minutes for Black 105. There were only five plays during the first Itō session. Black 105 became the sealed play.

  The Master had used only ten minutes, and Otaké four hours and fourteen minutes. In all Otaké had used twenty-one hours and twenty minutes, more than half the unprecedented forty-hour allotment.

  Onoda and Iwamoto, the judges, were absent, participating in the autumn tournament.

  "There is something dark about Otaké's game these days," I had heard Iwamoto say at Hakoné.

  "There are bright and dark in Go?"

  "There are indeed. A game takes on its own shading. There's something very cheerless about Otaké's. Something dark. Bright and dark have nothing to do wit
h winning and losing. I'm not saying that Otaké's game is any the worse for it."

  Otaké had a disturbingly unbalanced record. He had lost all eight of his matches at the spring tournament. Then, in the special tournament sponsored by the Nichinichi to choose the Master's last challenger, he had won all his matches.

  I had not thought the Black game against the Master especially cheerful. There was something oppressive about it, something that seemed to push up from deep within, like a strangled cry. Concentrated power was on collision course, one looked in vain for a free and natural flow. The opening moves had been heavy and a sort of inexorable gnawing had followed.

  I have also heard that there are two sorts of players, those who are forever dissatisfied with themselves and those who are forever confident. Otaké may be put in the former category, Wu in the latter.

  Otaké, the dissatisfied sort, could not, in what he himself had called a close and delicate game, allow himself the luxury of easy, cavalier play - not while the outcome remained in doubt.

  33

  After the first Itō session there was a disagreement, so considerable that the date for the next session was uncertain.

  As at Hakoné, the Master requested a modification of the rules because of his illness. Otaké refused to accede. He was more stubborn than he had been at Hakoné. Perhaps Hakoné had given him all the amendments he could tolerate.

  I was in no position to write of the inside happenings and do not remember them as well as I might, but they had

  Four-day recesses had been agreed upon, and the agreement had been honoured at Hakoné. The recesses were of course to recover from the strain of a session, but for the Master, sealed in at the Naraya as required by the "canning" system, they had the perverse effect of adding to the strain. As the Master's condition became serious, there had been talk of shortening the recesses. Otaké had stubbornly rejected any such proposals. His one concession had been to move the last Hakoné session up a day. It had been limited to the Master's White 100; and although the schedule itself was on the whole maintained, the plan of having the sessions last from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon was abandoned.