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Go History
    Keywords: Culture & History, People

Dave Sigaty: Until now the best place for Go History (at least the history in Japan) has been Andrew Grant's pages. These are no longer up (see [1] below) so it seems necessary for the SL community to produce a "Do It Yourself" version of Go History.

I have taken the Names in Go lists plus a few other items (so far) and created "time lines" by country. I have ordered people based on their birthdays. Please add your events and expand on those listed below as you see fit.

  • China [2]
  • Japan [3]
  • Korea [4]
  • Non-Asian Countries [5]
  • Computer Go [6]
  • Sensei's Library [7]
  • Elsewhere [8]

Note that John Fairbairn was gradually publishing a varied and fascinating series of [ext] historical essays and other (often historical) materials on the [ext] features page at Mindzine. The site has become inactive but it and the materials are still there. Most materials on Go history in English are about Japan. John's work is much broader, covering not only the big three (China, Japan, and Korea) but digressing to Tibet and Okinawa as well. Read them while they last. And if you have the opportunity, push John to find a new venue for publishing additional works as well!!


[2] Timeline China

  • Perhaps as long as 4000 years before present time: Go begins development as a game. (Charles This date has been consistently questioned - so I don't think it should appear here uncontested.)
  • Fifth(?) century BC: Go is mentioned in the "Analects" of Confucius
  • First century AD: Ban Gu writes the "Yi Zhi" (Essence of Go), the earliest surviving text devoted specifically to Go. Read John Fairbairn's [ext] essay on the Yi Zhi.
  • Huang Longshi b. 1651 (1654?) d. ~1695
  • Fan Xiping (also called Fan Shixun) b. 1709 d. ?
  • Shi Ding'an b. 1710 d. 1770
  • Guo Tisheng b.1907 d.1989
  • Chen Zude b.1944
  • Nie Weiping b. 1952
  • Guo Juan b. 1960
  • Rui Naiwei b. 1963
  • Ma Xiaochun b. 1964
  • Chang Hao b. 1976
  • ...

[3] Timeline Japan?


[4] Timeline Korea?


[5] Timeline Non-Asian Countries

  • 19th century: Go was brought to America by Asian immigrants
  • 1934: AGA founded
  • Michael Redmond b. 1963; first "western" 9-dan (2000)
  • 2003, Jan 16: Hans Pietsch b. 1968, German Nihon Ki-in 6-dan, been shot on a go promotion tour in Guatemala.
  • ...

[6] Timeline Computer Go

  • 1968: Albert L. Zobrist wrote the first ever program which played complete Go games.
  • 1984: The Acornsoft Computer Go Competition: first ever computer go event, for programs for the BBC micro (6502 chip); devised by David Johnson-Davies and Charles Matthews. The winning program was published in 1985 in the Acornsoft range. See [ext] http://www.reiss.demon.co.uk/webgo/mile.htm for some computer go 'firsts'.
  • 1989, Mar 13: GNU Go 1.1 (first stable release) was posted to comp.sources.games
  • 1994, Mar 25: First review on the Go Teaching Ladder: rabbit (7d) commented a game between Jan van der Steen (3d) and jon (1d).
  • ...

[7] Timeline Sensei's Library

  • 2000, Oct 21: Two "wild and crazy guys" (Arno and Morten) create a WikiWikiWeb to act as the on-line repository of (real soon now) all Go knowledge in the world - Sensei's Library.
  • 2001, Jan 5: Sensei's Library opens to the public with an announcement on rec.games.go. It is soon overrun with noisy but good-natured riff raff :-)
  • ...

More details are at SL History.


[8] Timelines Elsewhere


[1] Discussion

Dave Sigaty: Andrew Grant has written a series of articles on the history of Go. You can find them at [ext] http://www.honinbo.freeserve.co.uk/.

BlueWyvern: This link seems to be broken, does anyone know what is up? I've been trying to go there for a week now...

Morten Pahle: Andrew just (05/09/01) told me that the site has been taken down because he wants to publish the contents as a book.

Andrew Grant: The publication date of my book on the history of Go has come forward by quite a bit since my last posting here. Slate and Shell, my publisher, told me yesterday (22/1/03) that the manuscript has gone to the printer and it should be coming off the presses in "about ten days".

Stefan: Great! I'll definitely order a copy. And welcome to the library.

Andrew Grant: Unfortunately the book will not now be appearing due to copyright? problems.

BobMcGuigan: I'd like to know more about go in Japan before the time of Sansa. Presumably it came to Japan? from China at the time of the great borrowing from Chinese culture but it would be nice to know more about that. It would also be nice to know more about go (weichi) in China during the centuries following 1700. Same for the history of baduk in Korea? before Cho Nam-ch'eol.

HolIgor: As far as I know Genji no monogatari mentions the game several times. As it was written at the beginning of 11th century, one can assume that the game was popular at the court at that time. Of course, Fujiwara no Sai comes from that period as well.



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