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Kawabata's Master of Go
    Keywords: Culture & History, Books & Publications

Kawabata Yasunari (surname first), Nobel prizewinner for Literature, published this novel in 1951. It describes the last game, in 1938, of a Go master (actually Shusai Meijin) and the younger challenger. It was first published as Meijin in the Shincho magazine in 1951. It was printed in book form in 1954.

The version translated into English by Edward G. Seidensticker is a shorter form preferred by Kawabata, since it was the one included in the most recent edition of his complete works (as of 1972). Some material was cut from between the end of the match and the master's death. Translations to other languages including French exist.

Seidensticker's translation is published by Wideview/Perigee Books, of G.P. Putnam's Sons, ISBN 0-399-50528-8. The diagrams have been inverted from the Japanese edition, and some stones lose their move numbers in some diagrams. The group of four captured White stones become four unnumbered Black stones in later diagrams. The translation itself has won good reviews.

Other translations and editions exist.


I've just read the book. I HolIgor was a little surprised to actually find the diagrams of the game there. As a piece of high literature it could just mention the author's interpretation of the value of moves. But Kawabata takes a more technical approach, still keeping his excellent style and writing more about people than the game. In the situations where his amateur judgement is not sufficient he cites Go Seigen.

The moral issue of the book is the conflict between the old artistic values and the new pragmatic young approach. Kawabata takes the conservative side and is definitely Meijin's fan. For balance though he shows his sympathy to the challenger (Kitani Minoru - the changed name won't fool anybody). His school is mentioned as well.

The highest point of the book is, of course, Black 121. That was a sealed move. The next session was in two days. The referee opened the envelope and could not find the move. Then he muttered: "Ah..."

I looked at the diagram to find it. When I finally found the move I was disgusted. Disgusted was Kawabata. Kawabata did not see the Meijin's reaction but that day the Meijin committed multiple errors and lost the game. During the dinner he said that the challenger spoiled the game and he wanted to resign immediately.

Interestingly, pros were on the challenger's side seeing nothing wrong with sealing a forcing move (or making a forcing move just to gain some time for the real problem on hands). Go Seigen, for example, was more critical of the Meijin's automatic reply. A different defensive move was better in his opinion. It seems that the Meijin's fast reaction was just a sign of his anger.

[Diagram]
2 (121 in the game) was a sealed move

Here is the crucial position from the book. White played an empty triangle 1. Perhaps Black was too afraid to spoil his chance, but 2 was the sealed move. At the beginning of the next session, disgusted White replied 3 without thinking. Go Seigen thinks that White had to play a. My opinion is that all three of these moves were poor.

Looking through the diagrams I had a strong impression that White had a considerable lead up to White 130 after which the game became close. The problem is in komi, of course, to be more precise, in its absence. Even after all the Meijin's mistakes Black won by 5 points only. Komi 5.5 would make White the winner. However, this consideration is not applicable. With komi 5.5 Black would play far more daringly and riskily from the very beginning of the game. Black played to win by the existing rules.



Bill Spight: The attitudes of the players softened over time. Shusai later said that the play made sense as a kind of probe, to see how he would reply. I don't think that Kitani ever admitted publicly that he made the play so he could think about the game during the recess. However, in an article about the game for a Go magazine not long before his death, Kitani was asked about the move, and the controversy it caused. Kitani said, "Well, he answered it," and chuckled.

Andrew Grant It's unfair to criticise Kitani for playing a forcing move in this situation (certainly anything as strong as "disgust" is inappropriate). Shusai was notorious for playing tricks like this himself. In the old days the stronger player had the right to suspend play for the day as long as it was his turn; Shusai used to take full advantage of this, suspending play whenever he faced a tough decision so that he could analyse the position during the recess with his pupils. Kitani's friend Go Seigen was just one victim of this practice. One game Shusai played against Karigane in 1920 ended up taking 20 playing sessions over a period of six months. This was the main reason why Kitani insisted on fixed adjournment times with sealed moves. If he took the opportunity of the sealed move to give Shusai a dose of his own medicine, it's hard to blame him. Certainly for Shusai to complain that the game had been spoilt reeked of hypocrisy. Don't make Shusai out to be some kind of injured innocent.


Another curious aspect of the game was the fact that Meijin played an empty triangle in the center. Kawabata, who was about 5k level I (HolIgor) guess, understood that the shape was bad, so he explained the fact by the unwillingness of the Master to give in any point in a match that was so close. The result turned out to be disastrous. Kitani used his opponent's bad shape effectively.

John Fairbairn That seems unnecessarily rude about Kawabata. The GoGoD collection has two games by him. One marks his promotion to 2-dan in 1954, on 6 stones against Iwamoto. In 1963 he played a sponsored serious game for publication against the Meijin-Honinbo Sakata as 3-dan, also on 6 stones, and won by 6.


BobMcGuigan: I think some attention should be paid to Kawabata's literary intent in writing "Meijin". It is not strictly a piece of journalism and hence it may not be appropriate to make too strong a connection between what the real Kitani and Shusai said about the real game and what the characters Otake and Shusai say in the book. Many of Kawabata's works are concerned with the decline of traditional Japanese cultural icons. "Yukiguni" (Snow Country) treats the decline of the institution of the geisha, "Sembatsuru" (Thousand Cranes) the decline of the tea ceremony, and "Meijin" (The Master of Go) the decline of the traditional system of Go. Kawabata is mourning the loss of traditional Japanese cultural values, with the master representing tradition and Kitani representing the new wave. One scene in "Meijin" that brings this out is the scene at the inn where the master has to sit in a chair and drink Western style tea.



This is a copy of the living page "Kawabata's Master of Go" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.