I was very lucky to find a nice first edition copy of the English translation of The Master of Go by Kawabata Yasunari in the Bookends bookshop in Carlisle earlier this year. What a fabulous book shop. Three floors of meandering rooms that you can easily get lost in. I did whilst killing time waiting for the bus to Furness to start my hike along Hadrian's Wall. But that's another story...
Kawabata says of the master "He had the good fortune to be born in the early flush of Meiji. Probably never again will it be possible for anyone - for say, Wu C'hing-yuan of our own day - knowing of the vale of tears in which the Master spent his student years, to encompass in his individual person a whole panorama of history... He was the symbol of Go itself, he and his record shining through Meiji, Taisho and Showa, and his achievement in having brought the game to its modern flowering The match to end the career of the old master should have had in it the affectionate attention of his juniors, the finesse and subtlety of the warrior's way, the mysterious elegance of an art, everything to make it a masterpiece in itself, but the master could not stand outside the rules of equality" (Translation by Edward G. Seidensticker).
Kawabata says of the Master's game "The Master had out the game together as a work of art. It was as if the work, likened to a painting, were smeared black at the moment of highest tension. That play of white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony as of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary. That Black 121 having been a source of wonder and surprise and doubt and suspicion for us all, its effect in cutting the flow and harmony of the game cannot be denied" (Translation by Edward G. Seidensticker).
Soseki's description of the game in I am a Cat "Since I know little of the world outside my master's house, it was only recently that I clapped eyes on a go board. It's a weird contraption, something no sensible cat would ever think up. It's a smallish square divided into myriad smaller squares on which the players position black and white stones in so higgledy-piggledy a human fashion that one's eyes go askew to watch them. Thereafter, the devotees of this strange cult work themselves up into a muck-sweat, excitedly shouting that this or that rediculous little object is in danger, has escaped, has been captured, killed, rescued, or whatever. And all this over a bare square foot of board where the mildest tap with my right, front paw would wreak irrevocable havoc. As Singleman might quote from his compendium of Zen sermons, one gathers grasses and with their thatch creates a hermitage only to find the same old field when the thatch is blown away" (Translated by Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson).
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