Japanese Rules

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The defining features of Japanese style rulesets are

Compare with Chinese rules.

Official Rulesets:

Japanese Style Rulesets:

Commentaries:


Life and Death Rules

Because the Japanese rules make use of Territory Scoring, which penalizes plays in your own territory, there needs to be some procedure for resolving life and death disputes at the end of the game without having to resume play. See Bent Four In The Corner for one example and Question About Japanese Scoring for some discussion.

The 1949 Japanese rules, the first formally written Japanese ruleset, resolved problematic situations with special rulings. However, the ad hoc character of those rulings drew criticism.

The 1989 rules were an improvement in the sense that such cases are now decided by method. The drawback is that the method is not easy to understand, and still produces some unexpected and peculiar results.

In any case, actual disputes are very rare, and normally easily resolved.

"Passing for ko"

If there is a dispute after both players have passed, then the only solution may be for one player to ask for the game to resume - and this is valid in the rules - once the game is resumed it is done so with the other player moving first. A resumed game has the extra rule that one cannot recapture a ko before they pass. Thus, to give an example of these two rules:

At the end of the game there is a dispute, white asks for a resume, black accepts and moves. sooner or later white takes a ko, black passes (for ko) white moves elsewhere black takes the ko... then white must pass before they can retake the ko.

See Discussion for more.


This is a copy of the living page "Japanese Rules" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2005 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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