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Fujisawa Tesuji Dictionary Discussion
  Difficulty: Advanced   Keywords: Tesuji

May 16, 2003

DougRidgway Added a bit to the TOC and reorganized a bit, to make the first paragraph make sense to those not involved in the discussion. Lots still to do, of course.

I'm not really sure how to handle attributions. I don't think John will want to be associated with my hamfisted attempts to render things into English based on a mediocre Chinese translation.


Tamsin: Once you get past the initial intimidation of handling a pair of go books in Japanese for what may be the first time, you will soon realise how very densely packed with information the dictionary is. To begin squeezing the juice from it requires a calm and patient effort to organise the material into a manageable form; I doubt you will prosper simply by dipping into it.

My first step was to copy all the heading supplied by JohnFairbairn on the FujisawaTesujiDictionary page, making sure that these headings corresponded with the diagrams -- if you find yourself describing as "Sealing In" a diagram in which a stone is breaking out, then you can be reasonably sure that you've made a mistake.

Then I got into the main body of Volume I and pencilled in the English translations of the chapter headings and, for added benefit, began writing the chapter theme (e.g., "sabaki") on every page so that I could see at once what chapter I was looking at while using the book.

The chapters are, as John has explained, divided according to goals rather than means. That is, the chapters have titles such as "Shape-destroying Tesuji" rather than "Placement Tesuji. This is, as John again pointed out, actually very logical. Suppose you sit down and learn, say, the "Belly Tesuji" from James Davies's book. For a while, you might seek opportunities to play this move regardless of how appropriate it is to the position. In contrast, if you learn various ways of sealing in the opponent from the Fujisawa dictionary, then you will only be seeking to use these when the important thing is, indeed, to be sealing the opponent in. There is a lot to be said for learning what the goals are before learning the techniques to accomplish them.

At the beginning of the chapters you will find several diagrams, each showing one technique for achieving the aim. After that, the material in each chapter is arranged in the order of the Japanese syllabaries, according to the name of the techniques. Generally, there is one technique on each page. There is a big diagram and beside it the technique's name is printed in bold letters, in a cartouche. It is well worth translating that name, if nothing else, for that tells you what to look for in that kind of situation. Below the main diagram of three numbered diagrams, each showing ways of handling the situation above. Usually, the tesuji is the one that corresponds to the word in the cartouche - e.g., once I realised that "kaketsugi" means "hanging connection", I was able to find the right diagram quickly, since it was the only one in which a hanging connection appeared; studying it and the other diagrams convinced me that this move gave the best result. In addition, you will quickly learn to recognise the kanji for tesuji, and that is a further help in identifying the critical diagrams.

As I commented on the original FujisawaTesujiDictionary page, one becomes quickly aware of the difference between Western go materials and books of this kind. This is definitely not a beginner's book, language issues apart. In a book like James Davies's Tesuji [1] you find examples of the basic tactical techniques, and you really need to be thoroughly versed in these before you can hope to enjoy Fujisawa Sensei's dictionary. Many of the techniques described here are what you might call "combos", if you have ever played video games. That is, combinations of plays rather than simple, single-concept solutions of the kind found in Western tesuji books and in life and death books. Here is one example, headed "atemakuri" ("Atari Wrap"):

[Diagram]
corner: BASIC SITUATION: Black to seal White in with "Atemakuri" ("Atari Wrap").

[Diagram]
corner: One way to play, satisfactory but not optimal

[Diagram]
corner: Step One of the Tesuji: Ate/Atari

[Diagram]
corner: Step Two: Black wraps up White with a Belly Strike


The simple technique, the Eye Stealing Tesuji gives a good result, but the multi-step technique gives influence on an even bigger scale.

What does all this do for your playing strength, though? Studying these examples should help you to think about relationships between stones in a somewhat deeper way: if you can't find a solution based on a single move, then here are many ideas for solving problems in a more roundabout way. Constantly studying these more complex relationships should give you a much better idea of how situations affect one another, stimulating your mind to think about tactics in a much more creative way. I have only just had the book, so it is rather early for me to predict with any confidence what effect it will have on me, but I can say that my imagination feels sparked: there are many more ways of getting the goal than the simple ones learned from Western books (which is certainly not to decry their great value). Even in this short time I have become more devious, perhaps because I am beginning to see that tactics can have much more global characteristics than one might first realise, both on a large and a small scale: changing one local situation can dramatically alter a nearby local situation, while changing a detail in a local situation can indeed crucially affect another detail within that particular local situation.

PLEASE NOTE: Although I have posted up one example from the dictionary here, I do not intend to compile a categorised series of examples from the dictionary here, as that would, in my view, be against fair usage. I would urge others not to be too free with examples, either. It is well worth going to the trouble of buying this book.


[1]

Charles Matthews General comment here. Tamsin rightly identifies a steep learning gradient from the (very good) Tesuji by Davies to the work under discussion. There are dozens of tesuji problem books easily available in Japanese; which tend to copy each other. I'm aware of books by Shuho and Segoe that moved the subject along; but often a tesuji problem collection will rehash some old material that is in the public domain, with minor changes.

Now the Fujisawa work seems to be a much more scholarly and thorough rendering of that whole 'syllabus', which has often been recycled through magazines and hack collections.

The Davies book, on the other hand, strikes me (as someone who has worked over many of the Japanese books) as fresh in approach. Though the subject itself has been pretty well worked out, the results in it of individual thought do show through, as well as adaptation of the material to Western tastes.

This accounts for some of the 'culture shock' if you move straight from Davies to Fujisawa. Reading the latter thoroughly can get one from 1 dan to 2 dan. Good luck, Tamsin.


Tamsin I'd like to add that using Japanese go books is a really good way to learn the Japanese language, since one feels highly motivated to understand what's there - and that is an inexpressibly powerful aid to learning. Much better than learning how to read/write "Hello, my name is Yuki/Jones. May I have 2 pounds of fish please and a can of Pocari Sweat?" (i.e., the kind of drivel one finds as examples of "everyday conversation" in language textbooks. That said, sometimes the drivel can be extremely funny, as in one English text book for foreigners that a friend once showed me, which taught one how to say "I say, why don't you go to the Fishmongers and buy us some haddock for our tea?" Correct, but nothing a native English-speaker would ever say).

Dieter: Lol, but self-fulfilling. What do you want to learn japanese for ? In order to read Go books more easily ? I have done my oral math exams in Portuguese without noteworthy problems (as far as my Portuguese was concerned) but I found myself unable to name any tree or flower when we made a trip into the countryside.

Tamsin: Good point, since I guess my Japanese go vocabulary far outstrips my Japanese everyday vocabulary. BUT, there are still many things in the tesuji dictionary that have a place in everyday life: for instance, one has ample practice material for reading katakana and hiragana; also, there are many important kanji, such as "Black", "White", "hand" and so on. It certainly cannot harm one's grip of Japanese, ne?


Tamsin: This may be of general benefit: I am setting up a page especially for asking for help in translating Japanese go terms. Here is the link: Japanese Go Term Help Page.



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(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.