The Master of Go

by Yusanari Kawabata

  Since the Master's heart condition was chronic and there was no way of knowing when it would improve, Dr. Inada of St. Luke's with great reluctance allowed the expedition to Itō, and asked that if at all possible the match be finished within a month. The Master's eyelids were somewhat swollen at the first session.

  There was concern lest the Master fall ill again, and a wish to have him free from the pressures of competition as soon as possible; and the newspaper wanted somehow to bring to a conclusion this match so popular among its readers. Delays would be dangerous. The only solution was to shorten the recesses. But Otaké was uncompromising.

  "We've been friends for a long time," said Murashima of the Fifth Rank. "Let me talk to him."

  Both Otaké and Murashima had come to Tokyo from the Osaka region as boys. Murashima had become a pupil of the Master's, Otaké had become apprenticed to Suzuki of the Seventh Rank; but no doubt Murashima took the optimistic view that, in view of their old friendship and their relations in the world of Go, a special plea from him would be effective. He went so far as to tell Otaké of the Master's ailments, however, and the result was to stiffen Otaké's resistance. Otaké went to the managers: so they had kept the Master's condition secret from him, and were asking him to do battle with an invalid?

  Otaké was no doubt angered, and thought it a blot on the game, that Murashima, a disciple of the Master's, should have a room at the inn and be seeing the Master. When Maeda of the Sixth Rank, a disciple of the Master's and brother-in-law to Otaké, had visited Hakoné, he had avoided the Master's room and stayed at a different inn. And probably Otaké could not tolerate the thought that such matters as friendship and sympathy should be brought into a disagreement over a solemn and inviolable contract.

  But what probably bothered him most was the thought of again having to challenge the aged Master; and the fact that his adversary was the Master made his position the more difficult.

  The situation went from bad to worse. Otaké began to talk of forfeiting the match. As at Hakoné, Mrs. Otaké came from Hiratsuka with her baby and sought to mollify him. A certain Tōgō, practitioner of the art of healing by palm massage, was called in. He was well known among Go players, Otaké having recommended him to numbers of colleagues. Otaké's admiration was not limited to Tōgō the healer: he also respected Tōgō's advice in personal matters. There was something of the religious ascetic about Tōgō. Otaké, who read the Lotus Sutra every morning, had a way of believing absolutely in anyone he was inclined to respect, and he was a man with a deep sense of obligation.

  "He will listen to Tōgō," said one of the managers. "Tōgō seems to think he should go on with the game."

  Otaké said that this would be my chance to give Tōgō's healing powers a try. It was an honest and friendly suggestion. I went to Otaké's room. Tōgō felt here and there with the palms of his hands.

  "There's nothing at all wrong with you," he said promptly. "You are delicate, but you will live a long life." But for some moments he continued to hold his hands over my chest.

  I too brought a hand to my chest, and noted with surprise that the quilted kimono over the right side was warm. He had brought his hands near but not touched me. The kimono was warm on the right side only, and chilly on the left. He explained that the warmth came from certain poisonous elements. I had been aware of nothing abnormal in the region of my lungs, and X-rays had revealed no abnormality. Yet I had from time to time sensed a certain pressure toward the right side, and so perhaps I had in fact been suffering from some slight indisposition. Even granting the effectiveness of Tōgō's methods, I was startled that the warmth should have come through the heavy quilting.

  Tōgō said that Otaké's destiny was in the match, and to forfeit it would make him an object of universal derision.

  The Master could only await the outcome of the negotiations. Since no one had informed him of the finer points, he was probably unaware that Otaké thought of forfeiting the match. He grew fretfully impatient as the days went by in useless succession. He drove to the Kawana Hotel for a change of scene and invited me to go with him. The next day I in turn took Otaké.

  Though threatening to forfeit the game, Otaké had remained sealed up at the inn, and I was fairly sure that he would presently be coaxed into a compromise. On the twenty-third a compromise was in fact reached: there would be play every three days, and the sessions would end at four in the afternoon. The compromise came on the fifth day after the first Itō session.

  When at Hakoné the four-day recess had been shortened to three, Otaké had said that he could not get enough rest in three days, and that two-and-a-half-hour sessions were too short. He could not find his pace. Now the three days were shortened to two.

  34

  One shoal had been traversed, and another lay ahead.

  As soon as he heard of the compromise, the Master said: "We'll begin tomorrow."

  But Otaké wanted to rest the next day and begin the day after.

  Unhappy with the delay, the Master was poised to begin immediately. The matter seemed to him a simple enough one. But Otaké's feelings were complicated. Weary from the long days of altercation, he needed rest and a change of mood before he resumed play. The two men were of two quite different natures. Otaké was moreover suffering from nervous indigestion. And the baby, at the inn with Mrs. Otaké, had caught cold and was running a high fever. Devoted to his family, Otaké was much concerned. He could not possibly play the next day.

  But it had been very bad management to keep the Master waiting so long. The managers could not tell him, all eager for battle, that Otaké's convenience demanded waiting a day longer. His "tomorrow" was for the managers absolute. Since there was also a difference in rank to consider, they sought to prevail upon Otaké. Already in a state of great tension, Otaké was much put out. He said he would forfeit the game.

  Yawata of the Association and Goi of the Nichinichi sat in a small upstairs room, silent and to all appearances exhausted. They seemed on the verge of surrender. Neither was an eloquent or persuasive man. I sat with them after dinner.

  The maid came for me. "Mr. Otaké says he would like to speak with you, please, Mr. Uragami. He is waiting in another room."

  "With me?" I was startled. The two looked at me. The maid led me to a large room in which Otaké was waiting alone. Though there was a brazier, the room was chilly.

  "I am very sorry indeed to bother you. You have been a great help over the months, but I have decided I have no recourse but to forfeit the game." His speech was abrupt and hurried. "I cannot go on as things are."

  "Oh?"

  "And I at least wanted to apologize."

  I was only a battle reporter, scarcely a person to whom he need apologize. That I should all the same be the recipient of formal apologies seemed evidence of our esteem for each other. My position had changed. I could not let matters stand as they were.

  I had been a passive observer of the disputes at Hakoné and after. They had not been my concern, and I had offered no opinion. Even now he was not asking my advice. He was informing me of his decision. Sitting with him and hearing of his tribulations, however, I felt for the first time that I should speak up, and indeed that I might possibly offer my services as mediator.

  I spoke boldly. I said that as challenger in this the Master's last game he was fighting in single combat, and he was also fighting a larger battle. He was the representative of a new day. He was being carried on by the currents of history. He had been through a year-long tournament to determine who would be the Master's last challenger. Kubomatsu and Maeda had been the winners of an earlier elimination tournament among players of the Sixth Rank, and they had been joined by Suzuki, Segoé, Katō, and Otaké of the Seventh Rank in a tournament in which every player met every other. Otaké had defeated all five opponents. He had defeated two of his own teachers, Suzuki and Kubomatsu. Suzuki, it was said, would have bitter regrets for the rest of his life. In his prime he had won more games than he had lost as Black against the
Master's White, and the Master had avoided the next stage, at which they would play Black and White in alternation.{35} Perhaps, out of feelings for his old teacher, Otaké had wanted to let Suzuki have one last chance at the Master. Yet he had sent his teacher to defeat. And when he faced Kubomatsu, each of them with four victories, in the decisive match, he was again facing a teacher. One might therefore say that Otaké was playing for his two teachers in this contest with the Master. The young Otaké was no doubt a better representative of the active forces than were elders like Suzuki and Kubomatsu. His incomparable friend and rival, Wu of the Sixth Rank, would have been an equally appropriate representative, but Wu had five years earlier tried a radical opening against the Master and lost. And even though Wu had won a professional title, he had at the time been of the Fifth Rank, scarcely an eminence from which to face the Master at no handicap; and so the match had been of a different order from this the Master's last match. Some twelve or thirteen years before, and some years too before his match with Wu, the Master had been challenged by Karigané of the Seventh Rank. The contest was really between the Go Association and the rival Kiseisha, and, though Karigané was among the Master's rivals, he had over the years been the underdog. The Master won another victory, and that was all. And now "the invincible Master" was staking his title for the last time. The match had a far different import from those with Karigané and Wu. It was not likely that problems of succession would arise immediately if Otaké were to win, but the retirement match meant the end of an age and the bridge to a new age. There would be new vitality in the world of Go. To forfeit the match would be to interrupt the flow of history. The responsibility was a heavy one. Was Otaké really to let personal feelings and circumstances prevail ? Otaké had thirty-five years to go before he reached the Master's age—five more than the sum by the Oriental count of his years thus far. He had been reared by the Association in a day of prosperity, and the Master's youthful tribulations were of a different world. The Master had carried the principal burden from the beginnings of modern Go in early Meiji through its rise to its recent prosperity. Was not the proper course for his successors to see this match, the last of his long career, to a satisfactory end? At Hakoné the Master had behaved in a somewhat arbitrary fashion because of his illness, but still an old man had endured pain and gone on fighting. Not yet fully recovered, he had dyed his hair black to continue the battle here at Itō. There could be little doubt that he was staking his very life on it. If his young adversary were to forfeit, the sympathies of the world would be with the Master, and Otaké must be resigned to sharp criticism. Even if Otaké's case was a good one, he could expect nothing better than endless affirmations and denials, or perhaps a contest in mudslinging. He could not expect the world to recognize the facts. This last match would be history, and a forfeiture would be history too. The most important point of all was that Otaké carried responsibility for an emerging era. If the game were to end now, conjecture on the final outcome would become a matter of noisy and ugly rumours. Was it really right for a young successor to ruin the Master's last game ?

  I spoke hesitantly and by fits and starts. Yet I made what were for me a remarkable number of points. Otaké remained silent. He did not agree to continue the match. He of course had his reasons, and repeated concessions had brought him to the breaking point. He had just made another concession, and been ordered as a result to play on the morrow. No one had shown the slightest concern for his feelings. He could not play well in the circumstances, and so the conscientious thing was not to play at all.

  "If we postpone it a day, you will go on ?"

  "Yes, I suppose so. But there's no good in it, really."

  "But you will play the day after tomorrow?"

  I pushed for a clear answer. I did not say that I would speak to the Master. He continued to apologize.

  I returned to the managers' room. Goi lay with his head pillowed on an arm.

  "He said he wouldn't play, I suppose."

  "That's what he wanted to tell me." Yawata's broad back was hunched over the table. "But it seems he will go on if we postpone it a day. Shall I ask the Master ? Do I have your permission?"

  I went to the Master's room. "As a matter of fact, sir, I have a favour to ask. I know I'm not the one to do it, and you may think me presumptuous; but might we postpone our next session till the day after tomorrow? Mr. Otaké says that one more day is all he asks. His baby is running a high fever, and he is very upset. And he is having trouble with his digestion, I believe."

  The Master listened, a vacant expression on his face. But his answer was prompt: "That is entirely acceptable. We shall do as he wishes."

  Startled, I felt tears coming to my eyes.

  The problem had been almost too easily disposed of. I found it difficult to leave immediately. I stayed for a time talking with the Master's wife. The Master himself had nothing more to say, either about the postponement or about his adversary. A day's postponement may seem like a small enough concession. The Master had waited a very long time, however, and for a player midway through a match, all poised for a session, to have his plans suddenly thrown into confusion was no small matter at all. Indeed it was of such magnitude that the managers could not bring themselves to approach the Master. He no doubt sensed that the request had taken all the resolve I had. His quiet, almost casual acquiescence touched me deeply.

  I went to the managers and then to Otaké's room.

  "The Master agrees to play the day after tomorrow."

  Otaké seemed surprised.

  "He has conceded a point this time. Perhaps if something else comes up you can concede a point?"

  Mrs. Otaké, at the baby's side, thanked me most courteously. The room was in great disorder.

  35

  Play was resumed on the appointed day, November 25, a full week after the preceding session. Onoda and Iwamoto, the judges, neither at the moment occupied with the autumn tournament, had come the night before.

  Cushion of vermilion damask, purple armrest - the Master's place was a priestly one. And indeed the line of Honnimbō, Masters of Go, had been clerics from the day of the founder, Sansa, whose clerical name was Nikkai.

  Yawata of the Association explained that the Master had in fact taken orders and the priestly name Nichion and that he owned clerical robes. On a wall above the Go board was a framed inscription by Hampō: "My Life, a Fragment of a Landscape." Gazing up at the six Chinese characters, which leaned to the right, I remembered having read in the newspaper that this same Dr. Takada Sanaé{36} was gravely ill. Hanging on another wall was an account by Mishima Ki,{37} who used the nom de plume Chūshū, of the twelve famous places of Itō. On a hanging scroll in the next room, an eight-mat room, was a poem in Chinese by a wandering mendicant monk.

  A large oval brazier of paulownia was at the Master's side. Because he feared he might be coming down with a cold, he had water boiling on an oblong brazier behind him. At the urging of Otaké he wrapped himself in a muffler, and as further defense against the cold he was buried deep in a sort of over-cloak with a knitted lining. He was running a slight fever, he said.

  The sealed play, Black 105, was opened. The Master took only two minutes to play White 106; and another period of deliberation began for Otaké.

  "Very odd," Otaké muttered, as if in a trance. "I'm running out of time. The great man is running out of time, forty whole hours of it. Very odd. Nothing like it in the whole history of the game. Still wasting time there, are you? Should have played in one minute, no more."

  Incessantly, under a cloudy sky, bulbuls whistled and called. I went to the veranda and saw that an azalea by the pond was in bud and indeed had sent forth two unseasonal blooms. A gray wagtail came up to the veranda. Faint in the distance was the sound of a motor pump, bringing water from the hot spring.

  Otaké took an hour and three minutes for Black 107. Black 101, invading the White formation in the lower right-hand corner, was an offensive play demanding a response and worth a potential fourtee
n or fifteen points, and Black 107, though it did not require an immediate response, extended Black's territory toward the lower left, and was worth some twenty points. In both cases it seemed likely to us observers that considerable profit would redound to Black, and in both cases Black was favored by the order of the moves.

  Now the offensive had passed to White. A stern, intent expression on his face, the Master closed his eyes and breathed deeply. In the course of the session his face had taken on a coppery flush. His cheeks twitched. He seemed to hear neither the wind nor the drum{38} of a passing pilgrim. Yet he took forty-seven minutes for his next play. It was his one prolonged period of deliberation during the Itō sessions. Otaké took two hours and forty-three minutes for Black 109, which became the sealed play. The match had advanced only four plays. Otaké had used three hours and forty-six minutes, the Master but forty-nine minutes.

  "Anything could happen now," said Otaké, half jesting, as he left for the noon recess. "It's murderous."

  White 108 had the double aim of threatening Black in the upper left-hand corner and cutting away at Black's inner fastnesses, and of defending the White formation at the left of the board. It was a happy device.

  Wu said of it in his commentary: "White 108 was an extremely difficult play. One waited with not a little excitement to see where it would fall."

  36

  On the morning of the next session, after a two-day recess, the Master and Otaké both complained of indigestion. Otaké said that the pain had awakened him at five.

  No sooner had the sealed play, Black 109, been opened than Otaké excused himself, taking off his overskirt as he left.