Kawabata's Master of Go
The Master of Go is a novel written by Kawabata Yasunari (surname first).
Kawabata, a 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 (actually Kitani Minoru). 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. Kawabata's name is ordered in the Western order (Yasunari Kawabata) in the English-language version of the book. 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 and Vintage International, ISBN 0-394-47541-0 and 0-679-76106-3.
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 ( in the diagram below). 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.
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. 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.
Migeru Ah, that explains why at the beginning of chapter 5 it says _"On the first day there were only five plays, from black 101 to black 105. A dispute arose over scheduling the next session. Otake rejected the modified rules the Master had proposed for reasons of health, and said that he would forfeit the game."_
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.
Anonymous: I like to add, that (in Master of Go, the 1981 Perigee reprint) he is writing about himself giving a 13k western amateur six handicap stones. It reads: "I was Grade Thirteen," he said with careful precision, as if doing a sum. He was an American. | I first tried to give him a six-stone handicap. He had taken lessons at the Go Association, he said, and challenged some famous players. He had forms down well enough, but he had a way of playing thoughtlessly, without really putting himself into the game. (Kawabata:115-16)
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 the Master 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, "Sembazuru" (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 the character Otake 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. The supposed flap over the sealed forcing move is also a contrast between the old way and the new.
Ren: Does anyone have the full SGF of this game or know in which collection it could be found? Would be nice to read through.
Uwe Schmidt: Gobase.org has it. Search for Shusais games.
http://www.gobase.org
Ben: I think there might be a mistake with the translation. It seems that white's group would die if he played at "a" in the above diagram.
Bill: I checked the book (Knopf, 1972). What Wu (Go Seigen) said was that if Black waits until after White has played -
, White can answer
at
, and Black does not have the ko threat or threats that are there in the actual game. (There was no diagram in the book, this is my rendition.)
Also, Kitani pointed out elsewhere that after ,
is not sente. This appears to be an infinitesimal difference in chilled go, a very subtle point.
John F. Bill, there are several baffling aspects to your comment. You say you checked the book, but do not say which one. But whether you are citing the Japanese or the English one, there are major discrepancies with my versions of the books.
First, my edition of the Seidensticker translation (Penguin 1976, page 124) says: "Wu touched only lightly on the play. After a diagonal and connection on White's part at E-19 amd F-19, he said, 'White need not respond as the Master did with 122 even to Black's 121, but could defend himself at H-19. Black would thus find the possible ko threats more limited.'"
My edition of the Japanese version (Shincho Bunko 1982, page 121) has no inline diagrams (the game record is given only in bulk at the end of the book), and there is accordingly no possibility of reference to the format ,
no hanetsugi. The portion that relates to this in the Japanese original is, instead, just as point-specific as Seidensticker's version: "kono shiro kara, 'yo-ichi', 'ka-ichi' to, hanetsugi wo utareta ato de wa,..."
Also there is no reference to not having a ko threat or threats. The Japanese is koudate ga kikinikuku naru - a pedantic difference but the English is quantitative, the Japanese qualitative. Seidensticker's version seems to capture that.
Assuming, you are referring to an English book, this raises the possibility that there is more than one Seidensticker version around. My Penguin edition mentions that the translation was copyright Knopf 1972 and a note at the beginning mentions that "new diagrams, showing the progress of the match, were prepared for this Penguin edition by Stuart Dowsey, Director of the London Go Centre."
Now I remember talking to Stuart about this translation. It was 30 years ago, and I have to rely on memory, but my strong recollection is that Stuart tried very hard to get Seidensticker to change parts of the translation but was totally unsuccessful (and had there been any changes they would surely also have been reported or acknowledged). There may have been changes in later editions but it beggars belief that 'and' would be changed to 'or' on the say-so of a go player. There are certainly, from a go player's point of view, many infelicities in the translation (which is despite that a masterful work), but I'm not sure I recall anything that might go down as a pure mistranslation of this order.
Someone else refers on this page to "other translations and editions." Can they be more specific, please? If it is other English transaltions they mean, this is interesting because I have a recollection Seidensticker claimed to have secured a monopoly on translaing Kawabata's work.
If we are talking about other editions, well, the plot thickens - is there really an alternative Seidensticker text out there?
Bill: Thanks, John. :-) I checked the Knopf (1972) version. Here is the exact wording on p. 165:
"Wu touched only lightly on the play. After a diagonal linking on White's part at E-19 or F-19, he said, 'White need not respond as the Master did with 122 even to Black's 121, but could defend himself at H-19. Black would thus find the possible plays from kou more limited.'" (The text has a long o in kou instead of ou.)
This English plainly needs translation for go players. I adapted the diagram and took ",
no hane-tsugi" from Kitani's commentary. I think that it is something like "'yo-ichi', 'ka-ichi' to, hanetsugi". :-)
Anyway, thanks to your reply I have revised my comments above. :-)
John F. Interestinger and interestinger. Thanks, Bill - can anyone shed any light on other changes to the translation?. At this stage I'd have to assume changes were made for the Penguin edition, on the grounds that they listened to Dowsey regarding diagrams and they were in close touch with him regarding the Iwamoto Go for Beginners, but they omitted to acknowledge the changes to him and/or the general public. Maybe this was the only change. I do know that there was at elast one change that Dowsey wanted that was not made (regarding oyogu).
Reprints of the book in the UK may well follow the Penguin edition, but do modern editions in the USA follow Knopf or Penguin? And what about non-English translations?
Bob McGuigan: My copy of the Seidensticker translation is published as a Perigee softcover, copyright 1981, same ISBN as the one mentioned at the beginning of this page, but it has a different cover. It is simply a reprinting of the Knopf version. My copy of the Japanese is the same as John's.