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White to move and mate in two #597--The Master of Go [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-12-05  

It was hard for me to write about the Master and Otaké when we were together at the inn. Even when I stayed overnight at Hokoné I would go down to Miyanoshita or Tōnosawa. It made me uncomfortable to write about them and then be with them at the next session. Since I was reporting on a match sponsored by the newspaper, I had to arouse interest. A certain amount of embroidering was necessary. There was little chance that my amateur audience would understand the more delicate niceties of Go, and for seventy installments I had to make the manner and appearance and gestures and general behavior of the players my chief material. I was not so much observing the play as observing the players. They were the monarchs, and the managers and the reporters were their subjects. To report on Go as if it were a pursuit of supreme dignity and importance—and I could not pretend to understand it perfectly—I had to respect and admire the players. I was presently able to feel not only interest in the match but a sense of Go as an art, and that was because I reduced myself to nothing as I gazed at the Master.

I was in a deeply pensive mood when, on the day the match was finally recessed, I boarded a train at Ueno Station for Karuizawa. As I put my baggage on the rack, a tall foreigner hurried over from across the aisle some five or six seats forward.

“That will be a Go board.”

“How clever of you to know.”

“I have one myself. A great invention.”

The board was a magnet decorated with gold leaf, very convenient for playing on a train. In its cover it was not easy to recognize as a Go board. I was in the habit of taking it with me on my travels, since it added little to my baggage.

“Suppose we have a game. I am fascinated with it.” He spoke in Japanese. He promptly set the board on his knees. Since his legs were long and his knees high, it was more sensible to have the board on his knees than on mine.

“I am Grade Thirteen,” he said with careful precision, as if doing a sum. He was an American.

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