Hello,

Arno Hollosi recently referred me to the larger community for possible help identifying a series of old Go books.

I work for a used and rare bookstore and we recently acquired a 10 volume set of hardbacks in slipcases which I've managed to identify as being by Utaro Hashimoto, though I have not managed to find any further reference to them or been able to pin down a good translation of the title, publisher, etc.

I've uploaded a few pictures to an imgur account here: http://imgur.com/a/PfKW9 Any thoughts or information on them would be very helpful and appreciated. It looks like a really interesting set, but it's outside my area of expertise and I'd like to pin down exactly what it is so I can figure out how to describe and price it fairly.

Thanks for your time! Aaron

Bob McGuigan Gendai no Meikyoku is a set of 10 volumes, as you said. The name of the set translates as Modern Master Games. Five players are represented with two volumes each, Hashimoto Utaro (volumes 1 and 2), Kitani Minoru (volumes 3 and 4), Go Seigen (volumes 5 and 6), Takagawa Kaku (volumes 7 and 8), and Sakata Eio (volumes 9 and 10). These five players were arguably the best in Japan during the post-war period up to 1965. The names of the players are indicated as authors of each of their own volumes of games, but likely there were unnamed ghost writers. The publisher was Seibundo Shinkosha. The publication information is found on the last page of the book (the first page if you hold the book the Western way). The publication year varies for the different volumes, the first publication date from the mid 1960's and there were at least six printings into the mid 1970's.