The Master of Go

by Yasunari Kawabata, Edward G. Seidensticker (Translator)

In 1938 Kawabata covered a championship Go match for his Tokyo newspaper. This intricate novel is a transmutation of that epic contest into fiction. The challenger, young, aggressive, gregarious, faces the Master, frail, aged, solitary. It is a duel between the Master's classical remote style and the ferocious attack of his young challenger. But the confrontation symbolizes a far wider conflict, a clash between modes, between generations, and ultimately between life and death. This restrained and subtle novel is a work of astonishing density which draws from its obsessional core expanding layers of meaning.

Cover photo by Tony Evans.

Genres: Fiction, Japan, Japanese Literature, Classics, Literature, Go, Nobel Prize

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成) was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and are still widely read today.
Nobel Lecture: 1968
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prize...

Reviews

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this slim book - based partially on Kawabata's newspaper reports of one of the century's most famous Go matches. I don't understand the game at all (Wikipedia rabbit hole somehow left me more confused than when I started), but the psychological import of the conflict between the aged, stubborn master and his young challenger is fantastic. The obvious comp is Zweig's CHESS STORY, but this is quite different, an existential novel that in some ways is an extended metaphor about transitions in Japan during World War 2.

I loved some small scenes, like Kawabata playing an American on a train on the way back from a match: "If I pushed him back a little or made a surprise move, he quietly collapsed. It was as if I were throwing a large but badly balanced opponent in a wrestling match. Indeed this quickness to lose left me wondering uncomfortably if I might not have something innately evil concealed within me."

Death mask photography and a cameo of the storm from the Makioka Sisters (my favorite scene in ANY book) further elevate this beyond the game.

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kawabata writes a factual account of a Go match, which at one level could be compared with the sort of journalism you see in a magazine like New in Chess. He presents all the moves in the game, and comments the play. Somehow he turns it into an emotionally gripping meditation on life, art, fate and the inevitable destruction of traditional Japanese society. He apparently thought this was his best book - remember that he won the Nobel Prize.

It would be easy to say that this is a unique occurrence... but in fact, I think board games journalists are undervalued and Kawabata just happens to be the only one who's received any broader recognition. For example, Gena Sosonko is not as good, but it's not ridiculous either to compare him with Kawabata. In his case, he is mourning the vanished chess culture of the old Soviet Union.
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Another interesting piece of Go lore I picked up from the German guy I was talking with this afternoon. Anyone who knows anything about the game can see immediately that Kawabata was a decent player. Apparently, he was rather more than just "decent" - he was strong enough that he once won a three stone handicap game against a 9 Dan professional. In chess terms, I'd say that's about equivalent to an International Master title. Impressive.
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Now here's a development that's seriously confused my understanding of Kawabata's classic novel. A few days ago, Not and I watched the rather fine movie The Go Master - which, it might surprise you, isn't based on this book at all, but is a dramatization of the life of a different player, Go Seigen.

What's interesting for Kawabata fans is that the two stories intersect in an unexpected way. Go Seigen, a genius who is widely believed to be the greatest Go player of the 20th century, also played a match against Honinbo Shusai, the real-life prototype for "the Master" in Kawabata's book. Go seemed to be outplaying Shusai throughout, and Shusai, in desperation, resorted to an extremely unethical strategy. As the nominally stronger player, he had the right to adjourn the game when he wished, even when it was his turn to play. He did this several times, and each time analyzed the position together with his students before resuming. In the course of one of one of these adjournments, he found an unexpected move that changed the course of the game and allowed him to snatch a narrow victory. It is widely believed that the move was actually found by Shusai's student Maeda, later a top player in his own right. Maeda never confirmed or denied the story.

Five years later, Shusai played the match against Kitani that was immortalized in The Master of Go. Kitani, who was a friend of Go Seigen, naturally wanted to stop the Master from using the method that had worked so well for him in the previous match. In the face of considerable opposition, he required, and eventually obtained, a modification of the adjournment rule based on Western chess praxis. The player who wished to adjourn had to "seal their move", writing it down and putting it in a sealed envelope at the end of the playing session, so that both players would be on an even footing. As Kawabata recounts in the novel, Kitani understood the implications of the Western-style adjournment rule better than Shusai. At a critical juncture, he played a trivial forcing move to gain time to think, and this won him the game.

I have read the novel three times, and I believed it was clear that Kawabata was presenting Kitani's pragmatic action as unworthy and almost despicable. This seemed strange, since he is always referred to very positively in the Japanese Go literature. But now, knowing the background, I wonder if there is an ironic level that I have been missing. Kawabata, as noted, was a strong amateur Go player. It is inconceivable that he would not have been familiar with all the details of the earlier game between Go Seigen and Shusai, where Shusai had behaved in a far more underhand way than Kitani ever did. Basically, Shusai had it coming and everyone would have known this.

Is there anyone here who's read the book in the original and can comment?

[Praj · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two stones....two individuals. One game.....one world. The yin-yang philosophies sprouting from the wooden bowls on to a 19 x 19 arena. The small stones carrying the burden of altering destinies. In the realm of shōsetsu, Kawabata chronicles a factual reportage of a decisive championship game of Go held in 1938, between Honnimbō Shūsai and Mr. Kitano Minora. Abiding the culture of literary fiction, Kawabata confers fabricated identities to the players as well as to himself (Mr. Uragami) in this epic struggle that spans over the period of nearly six months.



**(Title holder Honnimbō Shūsai's last official game , his opponent being the 7th Class Mr. Kitani)**


“The game of Go is simple in its fundamentals and infinitely complex in the execution of them. It is not what might be called a game of moves, as chess and checkers.....”


Intersection

The game of Go commences with the stone being placed at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal squares. The Black stone always taking the privilege of an opening move. The devious tap of the stone on the wooden grid echoes the hysteria of a transitional era. New laws and new tactical regulation overruled the aristocratic stubbornness by refined trickery. The strategic moves alternating the white and black stones delineated the struggle of aristocracy vs. liberalism; youth vs. old age; new vs. old; and art vs. gaming pragmatism.

“Shusai the Master would seem in a variety of meanings to have stood at the boundary between the old and the new.”

The frail and ill Master who revered the tradition of Go as a way of life and art , painfully observed the transition of his beloved painting into the commercial entity bound by scientific regulations and competitive aggressiveness. An inhabitant of the Meiji Era, the Master finds himself standing on the edge of modernity that challenges traditional mores and progress in a strange world with cries for equality. Mr. Uragami, in his reportage addresses the Japanese landscape that is suspended between the resistance of the old cultural mores and the democratic post- war revolution. The Master who was accustomed to conservative prerogatives struggled to rationalize the tactical moves of his young adversary Mr. Otake. The unorthodox Black-69 move struck like a spray of black ink spoiling the rhythm of the Master’s harmonic artistic play. Uragami wonders if the “invincible” Master was now as feeble as the scrawny legs that marred the authoritative illusion. Were the long recesses and the venue changes between the games, a defense from the fury of the Black stones? The Black stones were insensitive to the pleas of an aged clamshell stone. The exhaustion of insomnia that ravaged the serenity during the four day long recesses was now curious about the loneliness that sprang from the nostalgia of a waning art. The frail Master with all his might hung on to the last threads of his invincibility.

“In that figure walking absently from the game there was the still sadness of another world. The Master seemed like a relic left behind by Meiji”

On the bridge of transition was the battle of the Master to restore the vitality of the very game that made him bleed, justified? Is the birth of nostalgia, the loneliness of change more agonizing than physical death? Mr. Uragami poses a baffling question whether the metaphoric notion of “sealed in cans” would make our lives happier without our territories being invaded or are we equipped to forfeit our conquered territories to smell the fresh winds of change?


Territory

Go is fierce; it is a territorial game. Territory called “ji” in Japanese is formed by a continuous line bounding the adversarial stones in a captured territory.

“Had Go, like the Nō drama and the tea ceremony, sunk deeper and deeper into the recesses of a strange Japanese tradition?"

Go becomes the medium through which various boundaries are pitted against a strategic battle of sustainability and perishability. Otake’s robust and patiently timed moves paves a path to a modern strategic system that abides the essence of time and laws challenging the Master and capturing territories by abstract conditions of Justice. Mr. Uragami take this territorial battle further into the lives of the players and the existence of Go as a traditional art and as a embedded culture of a nation. The Game of Go that has its origins in China about 4ooo years ago is now an inhabitant of the Japanese culture. It has been explored and improvised by the Japanese societal mores for more than 12oo years to be an important artistic heritage of the Japanese cultural territory. The threat of this game being captured by foreign territories becomes conspicuous when Mr. Uragami expresses his skepticism over whether a foreigner (Dr.Dueball’s Germany- the game had attracted players from America) would do justice to the game of Go as he will be unaware of the history of the game and would treat it is a sheer game and not art that had become a way of life to many Japanese Go players. Does the mystery and the nobility of a game is diminished if played away from the land of its origin? Is a sovereign heritage greater than the art of the game? These similar worries was expressed by the Master when in a bid to reclaim his genius over the game, he witnessed Otake’s severe game brimming with scientific precision and slyness. The striking of the stones was echoing the violence of a tragic chasm of a competitive world that had bestowed the title of “invincibility” to the Master crafting a grand super-powerful figure. The Master became a citizen of a hallucinatory world where he achieved a winning immortality; a world where he believed he could not afford to lose. The mentioning of the fact that the Master had not played the Black stones for more than 30 years; inferences can be drawn of a possibility of the White stones being the honored territory of a Master. Is then this illusionary territory that brings tragic consequence when the sanguine vagueness is marred by the loneliness of reality? When does the player become larger than the game? When do the mores of cultural heritage become greater than its sovereign nation? When does the move ‘Black-69’ strike like the flash of a dagger piercing into the safeguarded territory of the player capturing his stone wall?


Contiguity of Stones

The continuity of the stones is established by placing them in row in a horizontal and vertical manner. Diagonally placed stones are vulnerable for a territorial captive attack.A lonely stone is unfavourable to the playing contestant.

“Don’t you suppose he was lonely?”……. “Yes. But he (the Master) was always lonely.”

Did the loneliness, the thought of him being the probable last surviving ‘Master of Go’ from the Meiji era made the Master vulnerable to Otake’s stubborn ambition? Like an isolated stone that becomes less powerful, did the seclusion of his artistic prowess in the modern world made him defenseless?

Mr. Uragami contradicts the play of contiguity by illustrating a breakage brought by modernity in the world of Go and its players. In the play of black upon white and white upon black, the threat of forfeiture prevailed right from the personal feelings of the players to the fate of the game in the altered Japanese landscape. In the emerging new age and fresh vitality of Go would the frequent threat of forfeiture interrupt the contiguity of history and traditions leading to the collapse of the stone’s sanguineness?


Life and death of the stone

A stone has a life and can be killed when entirely surrounded by the adversarial stone. In the war like game the stones and the players amalgamate into one whole existence. The notion of “sealed in tin cans” depicted during the play keeps the player from external disturbance. The game and its strategies follow the players until the game is over and even thereafter, as in the case of the Master. For a Go player each free moment is a risk management session increasing the pressures of time and the deliberation over the future moves brings certain quirks and nervous addictions. The sanity of life is found in the madness of Go.

“He is not just a genius. He is inhuman”

Unlike Mr. Otake, the Master was bled by the game of Go. The shadows of Go followed the Master hovering into the vagueness of his existence. As a true artist sculpting the Go art, the Master resisted from judging the persona of the opponent as it perverted the sanctity of the game. The Master calculated his every move even when he played a game of chess, billiards and mahjong. When the Master played his moves and the game consumed his life, at times making him lose the realization of his own identity. The stones had sealed his destiny as a ‘Go Master’ in a can of loneliness and the shrewd game has made him a sort of a martyr. Mr. Uragami who himself was an ardent fan of the Master, infers that there are two types of players: - one who are complacent with their game output and the other who meticulously enhance their art; the word satisfaction being a rarity in their game. The Master belonged to the latter. The Master had become a tragic figure, a ghostlike existence. Novelist Naoki Sanjugo who wrote himself to death asserts,-
“If one chooses to look upon Go as valueless , then absolutely valueless it is ; and if one chooses to look upon it as a thing of value , the a thing of absolute value it is."

So where does a player stop from not letting the game consume him? Is the art of the game that creates martyrs of its soldiers? The pleasure of the game brings seclusion from worldly exhilarations of life. The unadulterated sleep of a child is far fetched blessing in the cursed insomniac world ridden by chaotic configurations. When does the harmonic monochromatic ballet of Go become a war of spirit and destiny? Is then life greater than a man or is the man greater than the life? The long coarse white –hair on the Master’s eyebrow; the symbol of life’s longevity knew the answer and so did White-130.



Under the morbid tides of destiny the death of a stone. The game ends. Hope ends..... A new stone is astutely placed on an intersection. Once again, the game of Go begins , deciding a new destiny for its Master.

[AiK · Rating 3 out of 5]

У меня были завышенные ожидания от этой книги Нобелевского лауреата - думалось, что будет много философии, мудрости, тонких японских пейзажей. Но оказался репортаж очень длинный, продолжительностью в полгода последней партией игры в го прославленного мастера Сюсая Хонинобо XXI. Имя Сюсая блистало в турнирах на протяжении трех эпох — Мэйдзи, Тайсё и Сева. Ему пришлось сражаться одновременно с двумя противниками - Отакэ и сердечной болезнью, причем однажды игра была отложена на три месяца из-за госпитализации мастера.
Игроки демонстрируют разные стили поведения. Онода, игрок шестого дана "при ходе противника тихо сидел с закрытыми глазами. Потом он объяснял, что таким образом старался преодолеть в себе жажду победы." Другие выключали сознание, пока противник думает.
Это было время, когда менялись правила игры в го, и это было время, когда на смену старому, эпохе Мэйдзи, приходило новое общество. Поэтому эта игра символизировала смену эпох. Существовавшие веками множество направлений в го исчезли, как рухнули и прочие пережитки феодальной эпохи в Японии.
"Ведь сейчас игра до мелочей регламентирована, исчезло изящество го как искусства, утрачено почитание старших, да и взаимное уважение людей как будто уменьшилось. Прекрасные японские и вообще восточные обычаи забылись даже в го — всё сейчас рассчитывают, всё обставляют всевозможными правилами. Переход в следующий дан, который изрядно влияет на жизнь профессионала, подчинен ныне мелочной системе набора очков. В го воцарилась тактика, которую можно назвать «победа любой ценой»; над красотой игры, над вкусом думать стало некогда. Сегодня господствует стремление играть во что бы то ни стало на равных, даже если твой противник — мастер, и дело здесь вовсе не в Отакэ. Ведь го не только искусство, это еще и борьба, соревнование, и поэтому такой ход событий, вероятно, неизбежен."
Сюсай был последним из мастеров, которые почитали традицию го как образ жизни и искусства.
В книге приводятся схемы расстановки камней на доске. Понять их может только тот, кто умеет играть.
"В Китае игра в го считалась игрой небожителей, в ней скрывалось нечто божественное. Но догадка о том, что триста шестьдесят одно пересечение линий на доске объемлет все законы Вселенной, божественные и человеческие, родилась в Японии."
Думаю, что философский смысл этой книги кроется в том, как эти триста шестьдесят одно пересечение объемлют все законы Вселенной, божественные и человеческие. Но в книге нет развития этого тезиса, поэтому смысл поймут посвященные в это знание, к коим я себя не отношу.

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Kawabata combines a journalistic narrative voice with such a rich literary tradition baffles me more than the intricate game of Go and it's complex representation of the structural game in society the novel is supposed to explore, and what a beautiful structure Kawabata takes us through, peeling such thin layers of meaning with each inflection and each crafty Go move between the classic master and the iconoclast challenger.

[Hulyacln · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reply 1988’i izlediğimde en sevdiğim karakter Choi Taek’ti. Baduk oyuncusuydu ve ben Baduk ne bilmiyordum. Sonra pek çok kuralı-görgüsü olan, strateji oyunu olduğunu öğrendim. Siyah ve beyaz taşlar satrancı, damayı anımsatıyordu ama alan daha genişti, oyun yavaş akıyor ve oyun bittiğinde iki oyuncudan hangisinin kazandığını anlamak mümkün olmuyordu.
Tabii bunun da bir sebebi varmış, hepsini yavaş yavaş gördüm. Baduk nam-ı diğer Go, hayatıma sadece uzaktan bir izleyici olsam da girmişti.
Ama bir Go oyununun kitabını okumak aklımda yoktu.
Söz konusu Kawabata olunca bu da gerçekleşti.
.
6 ay süren yenilmez usta Hon’inbō Shūsai ile yükselen isim Ōtake arasındaki maçı anlatıyor Kawabata. Eskiyle yeninin, gençlikle yaşlılığın, gelenekle bugünün yansımaları bu iki oyuncu.
1951 yılında bir dergide tefrika edilmesine karşın; 1938’de geçiyor maç, Japonya için kritik bir dönemde. Çin ile savaşın tırmanışında, İkinci Dünya Savaşı’nın arefesinde~
Sonu baştan belli bir hikayede yazar detaylarıyla bağlıyor okuru.
.
Yasunari Kawabata’nın da en tamamlanmış eseri olarak gördüğü Go Ustası’nı çok sevdim. Ama yazarla tanışmanızı bu eserle yapmamanızı da tavsiye edebilirim ~
.
Habibe Salğar çevirisi, Ayşe Merdit kapak uygulamasıyla ~

[notgettingenough · Rating 5 out of 5]

With no such intention in mind, I rather fell out of the frying pan on this one. I had to get away from Yourcenar and a glance at the shelves made me think nothing could be further from Hadrian than a book about Go.

My very first Go move, and it’s a mistake.

Continue here: http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpres...

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

How does a book about a go game win the Nobel Prize for Literature? (Actually, the book itself didn't win the prize - Kawabata the author did, but this book is widely regarded as his best, and probably the one that sealed the Nobel for him.) You have to read this book to understand what it's really like. It's a semi-fictional chronicle of an actual game between a revered reigning master and a rising young champion destined to unseat him. Yes, I just spoiled the ending, but it's pretty much given away in the beginning, and the "plot" of this novel is not about who wins the game. It is based on an actual game and actual figures in the go world, as Yasunari Kawabata, a go reporter, wrote about it in serialized form in 1938.

Go is often described as a metaphor for life, God, the soul of Japan, a game with infinitely-layered meanings as complex as the universe itself. I have dallied with go myself and love the game, though I'm a piss-poor player and not even close to being good enough to appreciate deep strategy at the level necessary to read a player's personality and innermost feelings from a single move. Kawabata, an amateur as he repeatedly reminds us, but still pretty good by amateur standards and familiar enough with the game to report on it for Japanese newspapers, describes not just the game between the Master and his challenger, Otake, but how it reflects the arc of their personalities and the Master's past and Otake's future. The game takes place over a period of six months, with elaborate formal rules, frequently renegotiated (the negotiations being one source of conflict and stress), concerning how many days break will take place between each day of play, and how many hours will be spent playing. This is not a game like you or I would play sitting down at a table for an afternoon. These two men sit down at the board and spend anywhere from 40 minutes to 3 hours contemplating their next move, and might play five stones between them in an afternoon, then retire for a few days (or in some cases, because of health issues, weeks).

So, from whence comes the drama and conflict in this slow, thoughtful game? Needless to say there is no violence, no upturned boards or people drawing swords. (This was 1938, not 1638.) It comes from the author's observations about go, about the personalities, about how go has changed as Japan is changing. There is much description of rooms and landscapes and trees and weather, minute and delicate details which I've noticed to be a common feature in Japanese novels. There is also a great deal of profiling of the two men. At one point, we learn that the Master is angry - infuriated, even. But he doesn't show this by raising his voice or even changing his expression. It's expressed when, back in his room, he politely shakes his head over his opponent's play and discusses forfeiting. He's indignant when he believes that his opponent used a tactic of sorts (to call it a "trick" would be too strong) to gain time during a recess between sessions to think about his next move.

It's almost impossible to explain why this is a source of indignation if you don't know anything about go, and even if you do, it's still a little opaque to an amateur Westerner like me. Reading this book, you are getting a deep, nuanced view of very traditional Japanese mindsets at a time of great change, when the country and the world was moving beneath them. This one game is like a pond showing the ripples. And keeping in mind that not being Japanese, not being a master go player, and reading a translation, you're really seeing third-hand ripples reflected through a fuzzy lens. And yet you can still follow Kawabata's thoughts and see the contrast between the Master and his opponent.

I wish, as I wished when I read Hikaru no Go, that I was good enough to look at a single move and appreciate its sublime brilliance, or how it casts a shadow over the board, or why go professionals can study and discuss one move and its many long-reaching implications and how it indicates that the player is aggressive, weak, uncertain, reckless, subtle, devious, or resolved, etc.

The Master of Go is not exciting. You have to ease your mind into it. It's like staring at a painting by a master; you know you're looking at something brilliant but the degree to which you can apprehend the brilliance may be somewhat limited. Yet though the "story" is merely an account of a go game (and the formal social manuevering surrounding it), there is a slow building of tension to a climax no less satisfying for your knowing how it ends. It's a very literary novel and if you don't like Japanese literature, you probably won't like this book. However, while an appreciation for go will enhance your enjoyment of it, you don't need to know the game to read this book. They could as easily be playing some other game — think of it as Vulcan checkers — and you'd still get the same sensory impressions and characterizations from play even not having a clue about the rules. (The book does include diagrams of the game as it progresses, though — go students still study this game as one of the classics.)

It's a quintessentially Japanese book, but I found the translation quite accessible. I know that both go mastery and Japanese fluency would make it infinitely more accessible, though.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

"This last match would be history..."

I got quite caught up in the drama of this novella - most of the said drama taking place in hushed rooms, sat upon tatami mats, everyone gazing upon a game board with black and white stones.

Kawabata's shōsetsu is better described as a chronicle-novel, described by his prolific translator Edward G. Seidensticker in the book's introduction, the gathered reportage + memoir of a 1938 Go match that Kawabata covered for the twin Osaka / Tokyo newspaper Mainichi. A true story, only the names of the characters are changed.

An aging Master's last round, a young opponent who recognizes the gravitas of the match, but wants to claim his spot; so much agonizing contemplation on where to place these numbered stones. The match continues intermittently over months of time with generous breaks in between for the players to rest, recover, and prep for the next "battle". The players actually make themselves sick with anxiety of stone placement on game days - stomach aches, sweats, nervous bladders.

We are told the results of the match early in the story, but this doesn't take away from the drama of the game play. We have visual diagrams of moves, placements - and my goodness, am I (kind of) understanding why the placing of White 130 was such a perilous move? - and play-by-play analysis by the amateur Go player/journalist, but also the fellow observers and apprentices critiquing the match.

Yes, it is about Go, but it's also about dualism, shifting tides, traditions, and modernity.

4.5 /5*

[Deniz Balcı · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evime, yuvama, Japon edebiyatına dönüyorum. Kısa bir ara vermek için edebiyatın en nezaket sahibi, en incelikli seslerinden birine uğruyorum: Sayın Yasunari Kavabata'ya...

Elbette ben 'Go Ustası'nı, Türkçede ilk kez basılan 1992 tarihli Remzi Kitap baskısından okumuştum. Fakat o ikinci dilden çeviriydi ve o dönemki birçok Japonca eser gibi kötü çeviri kurbanıydı. O yüzden Can Yayınları Kavabata külliyatını yayımlamaya başladığından beri orijinal dilinden çevrilen kitapları heyecanla bekliyordum, kavuşmuştuk ve bir süredir bakışıyorduk, nihayet okuyabildim.

Kavabata'nın 1968 Nobel Edebiyat Ödülü'nü alması Batı'nın gözlerinin ada ülkesine dönmesini sağladı. Nobel'e dair, Mişima'nın adının anıldığı fiskoslardan Kavabata'nın çıkması hala devam eden bazı spekülasyonların önünü açsa da komite ödülü "Japon zihninin özünü büyük duyarlılıkla ifade eden anlatı ustalığı için" gibi bir cümleyle Kavabata'ya takdim etti. Mişima'nın coşkun, fanatik, tutkulu, kavgalı sesine karşı; Kavabata'nın sessiz, içedönük, imgesel, zen ahengindeki sesini ödüllendirmeyi seçti. Böylelikle bir yandan da dünyanın Japon edebiyatına bakışına dair önemli bir yön verildi. Bu meseleler bitmez, o yüzden gelelim 'Go Ustası'na!

'Go Ustası' Kavabata'nın görece daha az bilinen bir eseri aslında. Zira ilk dönemde Batılı dillere ilk çevrilen kitapları 'İzu Dansözü', 'Karlar Ülkesi', 'Kiraz Çiçekleri' ve 'Bin Beyaz Turna' isimli kitapları olmuştu. Bunun temel sebebi, bu eserin son derece zor idrak edilecek bir meseleyi, Batılı bakışın kavramlara asla yaklaşamayacağı bir Japonlukla ele alıyor olması.

Kitap 1938 senesinde oynanan ve altı ay süren bir go turnuvasına odaklanıyor. Bu aslında yarı kurmaca bir eser, zira böyle bir maç gerçekten de yapılıyor tarihte. Usta Honinbo Shusai ile Otake isimli görece daha düşük seviyedeki bir oyuncunun tarihe kazınan maçına odaklanan Kavabata, bu maç nezdinde kendi gerçek gözlemlerine başvurduğu ölçüde, olayla ilgili kişisel görüşlerine de anlatı içerisinde yer veriyor. Bazı ayrıntıları kendince değiştiyor. Otake isimli oyuncunun gerçekte Minoru Kitani olması, do hamle sayılarının ve mekanlarının romandakinden farklı olması gibi. Elbette romanda Kavabata bir oyun tanıklıklığından fazlasını yapıyor. Zira yaşlı ve ölümün kıyısındaki Usta ile genç ve hırslı Otake'nin projeksiyonunda bir dualiteler karmaşası ortaya koyuyor. Tıpkı go oyununun doğasında olduğu gibi, siyah-beyaz, yaşlı-genç, geleneksel-modern, tarihsel-güncel olanın çatışmasını gösteriyor. Tanizaki'nin eserlerindeki modernleşme yozlaşması ya da Soseki'nin romanlarındaki sancılı dönüşümün fonda izlenmesi gibi açık ve renkli bir şekilde resmetmiyor Kavata; çok daha örtük ve küçük nüanslar üzerinden aktarmayı tercih ediyor. Zira onun insan kazısında Proustvari bir ayrıntıcılık var. İnsanın dürtülerine ve toplum tarafından belirlenen, sadece içinde yaşadığımız anın tarihselliğinde anlamlandırabileceğimiz motifleri işleyerek edebiyatını icra ediyor. Bu yüzden bize daha çok karakterlerin iç dünyasını göstermeyi tercih ediyor. Yargılmadan, ahlaksal bir çıkarım yapmadan yapıyor bunu da. Kavabata'nın eseri yazdığı yıllarda Japonya'nın içinde bulunduğu durum da son derece önemli. Zira ülkenin tarihini değiştirecek savaşın izlerini romanda direkt göremesek de, Usta'nın adım adım yürüdüğü epik kaybedişini tarihsel bir okuma olarak da ele almak mümkün. Diğer yandan go oyunu aracılığıyla Japon toplumunun benzersiz düşünme şekli ve yaklaşımı okuyanlara aktarılıyor.

Japon edebiyatı denilince akla ilk gelen isimlerden biri olan Kavabata, hayatıyla da son derece ilginç bir portre çizmeyi başarıyor. Gizemlerle dolu bir hayatı oluyor. Kavabata gibi kendi hayatlarına son veren Mişima, Dazai, Akutagava'da olduğu üzere. Diğerlerinin eserlerinde hazin sonları çok parlak şekilde okunabilecek, ipuçlarının izi sürülebilecekken Kavabata'nın edebiyatı buna geçit vermiyor. Yazınında hayatını sonlandırmasına dair bağıran doneler bulmak mümkün değil. Bu da benim her zaman ilgimi çeken başka bir özelliği olmuştur.

Çevirmen Habibe Salğar ismi ile ilk kez karşılaştım. Çevirmen kendini Japonca alanına vermiş bir akademisyen ve ben eski baskı ile karşılaştırmalı baktığımda çevirinin altından çok güzel kalktığını düşünüyorum. Umarım devamı gelir.

Can Yayınları'na bir kalp bırakmayı ihmal edemiyorum:)

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 1 out of 5]

YouTube.com has videos of people explaining how to play Go, so that is where I went to watch to prepare myself for this book.

That was edifying.

'The Master of Go’ is an acclaimed book, recognized in several countries as a masterpiece. However, it is NOT edifying.

A sick dying old man, a master of Go, plays an epic game against a young modern man. It is moved to various inns in Japan. Seasons pass, weather changes, illness comes and goes, negotiations stop the progress of the game, reporters eagerly follow the play week after week. The players meet about every three days, play can take 19 hours or three, and they might move one stone on the board or 20 moves. Often after a stone is moved, the opponent might take four hours of studying the board before making an answering move. Conversation between moves may occur, or not. Frequent bathroom trips indicate the tension. The Master's heart causes him frequent pain and he appears to be swollen in body, despite rarely eating. The author provides pictures of the moves on the game board. The narrator, a reporter who admires the Master, is brought to tears several times after desultory conversations with the Master despite the vagueness of the Master's responses. The game takes half a year to finish.


‘The Master of Go’ was written after WWII, but the action of the novel takes place in 1938 in Japan. It's supposed to be a heartfelt exploration of old values vs. new, Art vs. expertise, or in other words, tradition vs. change. Some even thought it obliquely was about the USA vs. Japan in fighting the war.

All I was thinking was how many more pages must I struggle through until I finished the book.

I was supposed to see or feel something, like a quiet realization of internal reverence, and a sense or feeling that a better way of existence is slipping away into the past. Instead I read on and on of two men glaring at each other, who occasionally take a break to sip tea and a walk. The old man stares maturely while the young man blinks with youthful vigor. Then one of them places a game piece down on a grid. I turned another page. Six months pass.

Oh, I did pick up the narrator's respectful sorrow. The narrator is an observing reporter. The reporter is quietly dazzled and shocked by depths of emotion the reporter somehow felt when looking at the stone faces of the players as they sit over the Go board. The feeling of the reporter was that of experiencing universal truths revealed.

What I actually felt was these men had created a bubble of (in)significance over a board game through misplaced numinous grandiosity.

I don't know. Maybe that was the author's point.

[Zeynep T.]

DNF (didnotfinish). Türkçe çevirinin 90. sayfasında pes ettim. Go hakkında yüzeysel bilgim var. Oynayanlar kitabı hakkıyla anlamak için Go hakkında derin bir kavrayışa sahip olmak gerektiğini söylemişler. Ayrıca külliyata hakim olanlar yazarın diğer kitaplarında görülen şiirsel ve etkileyici dili bu eserinde yok demiş. Ben de anlatımın kuru ve sıkıcı olduğunu düşünüyorum. Go'nun Japonya'nın siyasi durumu ve o dönemde yaşanan kültürel değişimi anlatmak için bir metafor olarak kullanıldığını anladım. Bu açıdan yaşlı usta ile ondan genç hırslı rakibi arasındaki mücadeleyi okumak anlatım dili güzel olsaydı hoş olurdu. Bereket Denizi serisinin ilk kitabı Bahar Karlarını bitirmemiş olsaydım belki tamamlardım Go Ustası'nı. Yukio Mishima bu çatışmaları mükemmel şekilde ele aldığı için oradan devam etmek daha iyi olacak benim için.

Kitabı ilk seferinde İngilizce okumayı deneyip yarım bırakmıştım. Bu sefer yazarın anlatım diline tosladım ne yazık ki. Kitabı yerinde dipnotlarla, gerektiğinde kullanılan vurgu ve italiklerle temiz bir Türkçeyle dilimize kazandıran Habibe Salğar'ın emeğine sağlık.

İlk okuma denemesi için not: 92 sayfa İngilizce çevirisinden okudum, devam edemiyorum. Türkçe okumayı deneyeceğim.

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Japanese Culture à Go-go

In 1938, a go match was played over six months in 14 sessions at several different locations in Japan. The opponents were the grand master, Shusai, and Otake, a younger professional challenger. Kawabata, then 39 years old, was the newspaper reporter who covered the match for Tokyo and Osaka newspapers. After the war, he turned his reportage into a novel which still retains much of the feeling of reports. If you don't know the game of `go', played with white and black stones on a board, or if you are not at all familiar with Japanese culture, then this book is probably not a good place to begin reading Japanese literature. However, if that is not the case, then Kawabata's subtle depiction of many themes in Japanese culture and in human life, may give you pleasure. He often turned to comparisons of the "old Japan" and the "Westernized Japan" in his novels. Here we find such human themes as the sick old man versus the young one or Life versus Death. But also the author wrote"From the way of Go, the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation." (p.52) Players worried about points, not elegance or dignity. Otake represents the new, the ambitious, the unrefined; the old master all that was vanishing, all that Kawabata mourned. As a novel about an arcane contest which still can bring out all these important, even universal, themes, THE MASTER OF GO is an amazing feat. If this sounds interesting, give it a try. You definitely won't find another novel like it ! Kawabata certainly deserved the Nobel Prize.

[Denisa Arsene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first meeting with Kawabata - and I believe is not the last. I had some emotions when I began reading - I didn't know the author's style, I had no idea about the game (still in the same place). But I came to understand that the story is not about the game of go, but about the clash of two generations, of two - we can say- civilisations. I am a traditionalist and I also love Japanese civilisation, their respect for tradition, for elders, for family and for others. Of course their tradition chaged a bit, but they integrate the new, they naturalize it in their own way.
It's almost like this game which is, originally a Chinese one and only after 10 centuries it enters in Japan and becomes an Art.
I was always on the meijin's side.
When - in train - there was a game between the journalist and the American, we can understand the difference between the two cultures: the respect and the good sense on one side and the aggressivness and the spirit of warrior (who has to win no matter what and how) on the other hand.
Following the game between the meijing and Otake 7-dan, it was like, almost, you were the witness of the clash of tradition and modernity. One could feel how some good things, attitudes and ideas died.
I think it's the case all over the world and a lot deeper than it is in Japan.
I loved this book. It is a must reading.

[Mizuki · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Go match must start at the appointed time even when the player's parents are on their deathbed or the player himself fell ill right over the chessboard.

The Master of Go records an old generation v.s. younger generation, tradition v.s. modern contest between one old Master of Go (actually, he was the last person to hold this title) and an up-and-coming one, and the actual event took place in year 1938.

The author, Yasunari Kawabata, who penned this novel years after he wrote serialized journalistic articles to record this match for a newspaper, was in fact a Go admirer and friend of the old Master of Go, that sounds great! I look forward to see Mr. Kawabata's take on this contest.

More to come.

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story, based partly on a journalist's report on a Go match, comes equipped with pictures of the board/moves. I know nothing about the game and did not investigate it as it appears to be exceedingly complex but still found the book fascinating and the atmosphere tense and lurid (one of the players being at death's door, the other spending much of his time between moves in the toilet or suffering from debilitating stomach trouble). Like all the books by Kawabata I have read, the plot (if there is one) is of little importance - his writing reminds me of Kafka's or Ishiguro's narrators searching for things they will never find. If that is the type of book you like, you will enjoy it. If you are looking for a story, you might well not.

[Yuki · Rating 5 out of 5]

EDIT:　I wonder, would a pun(?) like 明治ん - 名人 be acceptable...?

A masterpiece, perhaps? - all of Kawabata's sentiments crammed into one book rather than an observation of a Go match. Though Kawabata's ideals doesn't strike me as those which are sensible, for some reason this book touches me more deeply than I've ever expected.
After reading this, I thought as if for a moment, I could understand the reasons behind his suicide.

Another one-sitting read; 4 stars, +1 personal star.

[Smiley · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I've just read an interesting article in The Japan Times entitled "An exploration of the great game at the heart of 'the Master of Go' by Tyler Rothmar, informing his readers that the battle took place nearly six months and the victor finalized exactly 78 years ago today (December 4, 2016). If you'd like to read the JT article, please visit this web page: [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2...]

Reading this novel by Kawabata is, I think, a bit different from reading his other three, namely, "Snow Country", "Thousand Cranes", and "The Sound of the Mountain". One of the reasons is that it primarily focuses on the ultimate Go competition between the Master (Shusai) and the challenger (Otake) of the Seventh Rank from June 26, 1938 in Tokyo to December 4 in Ito (p. 4). The match was amazingly tactical, highly professional and horribly fierce to the extent that, due to his age, health and frailty, he finally gave in for Black 237, the last play by his opponent. (p. 6, diagram p. 177)

I've known vaguely about this famous Japanese Go since years ago with admiration because, as far as I know, those playing well deserve respects for their wisdom in planning that includes tactics in his defending as well as attacking. However, I'm not a Go player and I wonder which needs higher skills between playing Go or chess, and again, what kind of chess. Then, in this context, we'd be content with the country, that is, Japan since, I think, it's not fair or sensible to compare between a master of Japanese Go and a master of, say, Thai chess.

Therefore, I read this book as a Go-illiterate outsider curious of such "a faithful chronicle-novel" (p. v) and found his writing style surprising due to its 41 chapters of various length. Moreover, this chronicle depicts an unthinkable Go competition in its presumably national scale as waged by fate dictating the two Go warriors who use the Go board as their battlefield till 2.42 p.m. on December 4, 1938. (p. 6) So we merely read their fighting moves, for each having different time intervals as controled by the judges, the youth keeping the records and witnessed by the functionaries. Moreover, there're two sets of small numbered stones: Black 1, Black 3, Black, 3 ... Black 237 for Otake vs. White 2, White 4, White 6 ... White 236 for the Master. We can see how they start the decisive match on the chess-like Go board denoted by lines 1-19 (row) and letters A-T (across). There, Otake's started at R-16 while the Master's followed at R-4 (p. 36).

I came across a remark stating that "the first player has seven chances in ten of winning" (p. 57). I think this is a good remark from Go experts that need pondering and applying from both the challenger and the master. It's quite fair to allow more luck/chance for an opponent while a master with his charismatic, godlike stature should be satisfied due to his sublime Go skills. Indeed, I think if the Master could play Go and happily lost, like Sakine, Master of Chess, he could have enjoyed living longer.

This is not a romantic novel like the other three mentioned above, instead it's a novel-like story of such spine-chilling Go competitions. I'm sorry I don't understand the description of the diagram on page 177, that is, I can't find Black 201 and 203 (B-13 and C-13). Therefore, I'd appreciate my GR friends' information/explanation on the matter.

Finally, from Chapter 40, I'm a bit disappointed due to its lack of action/words from the great victor Otake, so I guess he may have spoken humbly, if need be, in honour of the Master. Certainly, the Master rightly deserves our respects for his graceful, heroic final mission. One more thing we need to take care, any serious match can be fatal, taking the middle way or being resilient should be the key to our success/satisfaction in our daily lives. Comparatively, Otake is the opponent the Master can see and plan to play the game, however, it's better if we'd rather have a few challenging us in the open for the face-to-face battle so that we know who they are and keep this in mind too.

[Ola G · Rating 3 out of 5]

7/10 stars

Interesting, unusual, meditative.

It's such a strange little book, showcasing the uniqueness of Japanese culture in unusual and hard-hitting ways. The emotions in a go match cover the entire range, from cold calculation to hot-headed anger, from triumph to quiet despair. A clash of personalities and traditions in a final match of the 'invincible Master' forms a background, or a metaphor, for the changes in Japan itself.

"Shusai the Master would seem, in a variety of meanings, to have stood at the boundary between the old and the new. He had at the same time the lofty position of the old master and the material benefits of the new. In a day the spirit of which was a mixture of idolatry and iconoclasm, the Master went into his last match as the last survivor among idols of old."

There is a lot of sadness in this book, a quiet grieving over the inevitable change and the destruction it brings; and yet, the sadness is ameliorated by the appreciation of the new way, by a slow and dignified acceptance of the inevitability. There is also a lot of pride in the traditions, an unbending, straight-backed adherence to old ways and their meaning, to concepts like honor, dignity, and propriety. The lens of the narrator is turned outward; the emotions he feels are reactions to the impulses coming from the outside world: the nature, others around him. The way Kawabata achieves the emotional weight of his novel/reportage is highly intriguing, dependent as much on the natural passage of time evidenced in the changing of seasons and weather patterns as on the actions of the protagonists.

You won't learn how to play go from this book; but you might come out reacher in understanding of the Japanese culture and perspectives. To that end, one last quote, from the match of the narrator and an American met on a train, who insisted on playing:

"He had the forms down well enough, but he had a way of playing thoughtlessly, without really putting himself into the game. Losing did not seem to bother him in the least. He went happily through game after game, as if to say that it was silly to take a mere game seriously. He lined his forces up after patterns he had been taught, and his opening plays were excellent; but he had no will to fight. If I pushed him back a little or made a surprise move, he quietly collapsed. It was as if I were throwing a large but badly balanced opponent in a wrestling match. Indeed this quickness to lose left me wondering uncomfortably if I might not have something innately evil concealed within me."

There is a lot to think about after reading this seemingly innocuous book. It's fascinating how culture shapes our perceptions, how it informs our reality. This book had been originally partly written as a series of dispatches from a real match of go, for the Japanese readers. This aspect of being thrown in the middle of it all makes this reading experience at once more alien and more intriguing, and recommended for all interested in Japan.

[Yann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un bon roman dédié au jeu de Go, l'un des plus complexes en dépit de règles relativement simples. Cette édition présente des diagrammes de l'évolution de la partie. L'accent est mis sur le duel, inspiré par des évènements réels, entre un vieux maître et un jeune outsider. La partie s'étale pendant fort longtemps, avec des interruptions de plusieurs semaines.

Au delà de l'affrontement, une des interprétation avancée dans la préface est qu'au travers de cette histoire, l'auteur a voulu figurer la mutation progressive entre un japon nourri de valeurs aristocratiques issues du passé féodal, faites d'excellence, d'honneur, de sacrifice, vers des valeurs démocratiques plus pragmatiques, faites de calcul, d'efficacité et qui ne s'embarrassent pas de toute la fastidieuse étiquette de l'ancienne éthique. Une évolution que l'auteur déplorerait nostalgiquement. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

[Laurent De Maertelaer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spannend relaas van een legendarische go-wedstrijd, waarbij de grootmeester wegens ziekte het onderspit delft en het prototypische jong talent zijn smerigste trukendoos opentrekt. Kawabata ritmeert perfect, bouwt de spanning op en graaft diep in de spelerszielen, dit alles in zijn typische ingetogen stijl. Met tekeningen van het verloop van de langdurige kamp, voor wie die wil naspelen. Onthaasting voor amateurs van bordspelen en japanofielen. Heerlijk.
PS: zijn er go-spelers op Goodreads? Wil het spel graag terug opnemen en tegenwoordig zijn er heel wat online platformen. Just a shot in the dark.

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The good books about the game are rare. I know only four one, "The chess player" Zweig, "Loujine defense" Nabokov, "Little chess player "Ogawa and this one.
He is exceptionnal. The Go is a very special game. By the time, territory is occupied. It's a brain représentation. Chcker draw waves, attacks, idea. I think that go is the reflect of himself.
Two player : old master personnify eternal old Japan and young master who is the future. The story came fron a real party after second world war.
It does not matter to know which gained, the challenge is not there. With the end of the old Master, it is a certain idea of Japan which disappears.
In complement of this reading, I advise you a Swiss film of Richard Dembo, "La diagonale du fou" Oscar of best foreign film in 1985.

[the_deepest_black]

Wielki powrót! ;)

Kawabata jak zwykle zachwyca eleganckim, lirycznym stylem i subtelną symboliką. Za życia zwykł był mawiać, że dano mu czas życia po to, by zaświadczyć o pięknie tradycyjnej kultury Japonii. W swojej twórczości poruszał tematykę samotności, piękna i ulotności życia.

"Meijin - mistrz go" to w zasadzie dłuższe opowiadanie, dzieło w każdym razie szczególne w dorobku pisarza, bo koncentrujące się na opisie jednej partii go, zwanych czasem dość ignorancko 'japońskimi szachami'.

Go to jedna z najstarszych gier planszowych na świecie. Jej początki mogą sięgać nawet 4000 lat wstecz. Pierwsze pisemne wzmianki o go pochodzą z V wieku p.n.e., ale gra była prawdopodobnie znana już wcześniej. Mówi się, że wynalazł ją cesarz Yao lub Shun, aby rozwijać umiejętności strategiczne swojego syna, jednak jest to zapewne legenda. Faktem pozostaje, że z początku była jednym ze sposobów radzenia sobie z nadmiarem czasu przez arystokrację, obok pisania poezji, kaligrafowania et cetera.

Oczywiście go jest bardziej popularne w Azji, miejscu swojego pochodzenia, w Chinach, ale także w Korei czy w Japonii. Gra go została wprowadzona do Japonii około VII wieku przez buddyjskich mnichów, którzy przybyli z Chin. Wieki potem Tokugawa Ieyasu uznał wartość strategiczną i intelektualną gry go i ustanowił oficjalne szkoły go. Najlepszy gracz z każdej szkoły otrzymywał tytuł "meijin" (mistrz) oraz roczną pensję od szogunatu. Pierwszy oficjalny meijin, Honinbo Sansa, był kluczową postacią w rozwoju go w Japonii. Jego wpływ i nauki ustanowiły fundamenty dla przyszłych pokoleń graczy. Bohater powieści Kawabaty - rozgrywający swój ostatni zawodowy pojedynek - ma właśnie tytuł kolejnego Honinbo.

Go w Japonii to nie tylko gra, ale także część kulturowego dziedzictwa kraju. Jest to narzędzie do rozwijania umiejętności strategicznych, cierpliwości i koncentracji. Japońskie podejście do go, z jego głębokim szacunkiem dla tradycji i mistrzostwa, nadal inspiruje graczy na całym świecie.

W Polsce go jest obecnie dopiero od II połowy XX wieku. Wtedy też powstało Polskie Stowarzyszenie Go (PSG). Jest ono organizatorem Mistrzostw Polski w go i jest członkiem Europejskiej Federacji Go oraz Światowej Federacji Go jako reprezentant Polski.

Wyłowione cytaty:

"Zatęskniłem nagle za ludźmi. Czułem się tak, jakbym po długiej wędrówce przekroczył górski grzbiet i ujrzał dym unoszący się nad wioską. Łaknąłem tej powszechnej krzątaniny towarzyszącej przygotowaniom do noworocznych uroczystości" (14).

"Użyłem aparatu Contax z obiektywem Sonnar 1,5, który, niezależnie od moich kwalifikacji, spisał się przyzwoicie, zgodnie ze swoimi możliwościami. Soczewce jest obojętne - żywy czy martwy, człowiek czy rzecz. Obce są jej wzruszenia i cześć. Ot, zwyczajnie, nie popełniłem wielkiego błędu w obsłudze, a resztę zrobił zeissowski obiektyw. I było zasługą soczewki, jeśli wizerunek, mimo że przedstawiał twarz zmarłego, dawał wrażenie głębi i miękkości. [...] Nabrałem stopniowo przekonania, że fotografie nie oddają ani życia, ani śmierci. [...] Pomyślałem, że zdjęcia są przejawem czegoś tajemniczego, czego nie wolno nam zobaczyć" (35).

"Uznałem, że było jednak nieroztropnością z mojej strony, że sfotografowałem zmarłego i żartowałem później, że to zrobiłem. Nie należy chyba utrwalać na fotografiach wizerunków nieżyjących osób. Ale przecież prawdą jest i to, że w obrazach tych powraca niezwykłe życie Mistrza" (36).

"Można powiedzieć, że w ostatniej partii swego życia Mistrz ucierpiał z powodu typowego dla nowych czasów racjonalizmu, który podporządkowując wszystko pedantycznym przepisom, sprawił, że ulotniły się gdzieś urok i wykwintność Sztuki, że zabrakło miejsca na respekt dla starszych, na wzajemny szacunek. Przekazywane przez pokolenia piękno Japonii, piękno Wschodu uleciały z Drogi go, a zastąpiły je kalkulacja i regulaminy. Zdobywanie coraz wyższych stopni, któremu podporządkowane jest życie zawodowego gracza, zostało poddane rygorom skrupulatnej punktacji. Najważniejsze w taktyce gry stało się dążenie do wygranej, zabrakło jednak miejsca na smakowanie czaru i dostojeństwa go jako Sztuki" (59-60). #uniwersytet #profesor #akademia #akademicy

"Wszystko, jak się zdaje, zmierza ku temu, że [...] tytuł mistrza stanie się przede wszystkim oznaką supremacji, czymś w rodzaju lauru zwycięstwa, a z punktu widzenia organizatorów turniejów - produktem" (60-61).

"Może to i prawda, że takie instytucje jak dożywotni tytuł mistrzowski, jak system rang i promocji, podobnie, jak obowiązujący w świcie tradycyjnych sztuk japońskich system szkół i licencji wydawanych przez ich szefów należą do feudalnych reliktów" (61).

"I oto dziś, gdy duch bałwochwalstwa idzie o lepsze z obrazoburstwem, Mistrz staje do swojego ostatniego pojedynku niczym staroświecka figurka, w której pobrzmiewa echo odchodzącego świata" (61).

"Kiedy ustanawia się prawo, pojawia się miejsce na spryt, który pozwala je ominąć" (62).

"Odpowiedział konfidencjonalnie: [...] wie pan... myśliciel ze mnie żaden, nie mam też niczego, co można by nazwać wiarą, a gdyby nawet było tak, jak niektórzy powiadają, że wspiera mnie poczucie odpowiedzialności wobec go, przecież to jedno nie tłumaczy jeszcze tego, że do tej pory wytrzymałem. Powiadają: 'siła duchowa', ale to mnie raczej nie przekonuje. [...] Może ja po prostu nie mam za grosz wrażliwości. Wie pan, taki trochę nieobecny typ. Myślę, że mi wyszło na dobre to roztargnienie" (87).

"Mogło się wydawać, że obliczu niebytu Mistrz uwolnił się na chwilę od świadomości swojego istnienia" (92).

[Cherisa B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Somewhat of a medley of the game of Go, atmospherics of Japan's Izu Peninsula, the last game of a master of the game passing the baton to a younger rival, and an elegy of the elder man. Slow, deliberate, somewhat bewildering to a Go dummy, but quite moving.

3 1/2 stars, only because so much of the language of the game was incomprehensible to me.

[Iván Ramírez Osorio · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kawabata es tranquilo, paciente, conciso, detallado y letal. Como jugador de Go, parece que cada una de sus palabras está fríamente calculada.

Enorme libro

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The sound of the stones on the board seemed to echo vastly through another world." (88)

[Tsung · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably not the best novel to get started on Kawabata. It is not representative of his usual sensory or sensual style of writing. Instead it is more contemplative and reflective. It was a bit draggy in parts with the details of the championship game. The ending also seemed incomplete.

”The invincible Master” had lost his last championship match.

It was the end of an era. Not only did Shusai’s reign finally come to an end, the new champion was not his choice as a successor. It was not just a case of being overtaken by the next generation, the master was overwhelmed by modern ethos and rules. There was a distinct loss of control, whereas in times gone by, the master was omnipotent in the realm of go.

There was something unreal about the pictures, which may have come from the case, the ultimate in tragedy, of a man so disciplined in an art that he had lost the better part of reality.

The master was a man obsessed. He was so consumed by the game, that he even neglected his own health. His ultra competitive nature shows in how he managed his break time, when he still continued to compete in other games such as chess and billiards. In contrast, Otake, the challenger was more in touch with reality. Family had a higher priority in life for Otake.

The Master seemed like a relic left behind by Meiji.

Perhaps there might be some sociopolitical undertones to the story.

Readable but not engaging.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kawabata is my most recent literary obsession, I'm just gonna read everything he ever wrote and I haven't gotten very far. "Scarlet Gang" was experimental and awesome, "Snow County" and "Thousand Cranes" and the"Palm-of-Hand Stories" sparse, gently, and apocalyptic (in a love sense), and "The Master of Go" is really not like the others at all. Kawabata fictionalizes an actual final game of Go he covered as a journalist, a last contest between one of its most famed players, terminally ill and failing, and a younger, distraught player of some skill.
It leans towards a more abstruse and symbolist structure and hue than his other earlier novels, is, in Japan, considered his best, and was considered by Kawabata himself his only "complete" novel.
It doesn't quite lack the quiet devastation of the works mentioned above, it takes a different approach, framing the story through the nuances of the game itself, while chronicling the slow, inevitable death of a master.

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un último juego que representa más que el enfrentamiento entre lo nuevo y lo viejo, sino que dos generaciones que por sucesos históricos tienen paradigmas de la vida contradictorios.
La dicotomía de los grandes autores japoneses del siglo XX quizás tiene a este libro como su producto más representativo.

[Kristel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel about the last game of a dying Go master was a gift to me by friends. They knew of my longstanding interest in Go and gave me this novel for my birthday. I've previously read a couple of Yasunari Kawabata's short stories in anthologies but I've always felt his writing to be at least one shade more oblique than is comfortable. This book, which is apparently more straightforward than a lot of his other novels, is quite difficult to parse as an emotional work. But I still end up contemplating its themes, turning them over in my head as one's fingers would fiddle a Go stone.

Yasunari Kawabata's The Master of Go is an example of the shishosetsu, a novel form that hinges upon the fictionalization of real events as experienced by the author. In this particular novel, the author is the newspaper correspondent covering the retirement game of the highly influential Go master Honinbo Shusai and the innovative younger player Otake (a thinly veiled fictionalization of eventual Go legend Minoru Kitani). Kawabata uses the actual game record in his storytelling, a recreation of which you can access here.

The novel opens with the news of Honinbo Shusai's death. He was the last hereditary heir to the tile of Honinbo, the dominant school of Go for the last 300 years. Shusai did not a name a successor--instead, he bequeathed the name Honinbo to the Japan Go Association. In many ways, Shusai's death was the end of Go as the genteel preoccupation of the shogun class, a break from the the imperial past. Interspersed with the story of his wake and the people traveling to pay their respects are scenes from the actual game, spanning six grueling months and several cities.

His competitor Otake has as much of his reputation on the line, if not more. He is one half of the two pillars of a new movement within the game called Shin Fuseki. I recognize the inherent nerdiness of calling board game moves "revolutionary," but believe me when I say that Shin Fuseki changed so much of game theory that it's now very difficult to apply the opening of games from the last century to current gameplay. Ask me in the comments and I'll try to elaborate in the wonkiest way I can.

You know that Hemingway exhortation about stories being icebergs where most of the mass is under the surface? Well, the Master of Go is basically an iceberg the size of a continent and the only visible part is one square yard of unadorned reportage. The novel works most overtly as an elegy, a mourning of the past by sensitive and artistic souls who are uncertain of a highly industrialized present. Though the game itself occurred in in 1938, Kawabata (who published it serially in 1951) transforms the story to encompass Japan's modernization, militarization and eventual loss in World War II. A significant percentage of his narrative is consumed by Shusai's ambivalence with the new, rigorous rules of Go, ostensible improvements that for him renders the game dehumanized.

Another, more subtle motif in the story is the idea of the game as a pure form, untouched by the outside world. One scene features a visibly angered Otake threatening to forfeit because the length of the game has forced him to be away from his family and school for extended periods, sometimes due to the caprice of the older Honinbo. His fatigue ends up showing in his performance. Another crucial plot point involves the use of the rules to get more thinking time in between sessions. On a more meta level, it also made me examine the idea of a "pure novel" that exists perfectly outside of all intertextuality. Because I found a lot of the themes opaque as I was reading the book, a lot of my subsequent pleasure comes mostly outside of it, from reading about historical context and studying commentary on the actual game. My opinion has also been colored by the knowledge that Shusai himself had been a highly divisive figure throughout his life, a discovery that tempers the idea of him as a figure of bodhisattvan temperance, enduring one last painful game to glorify posterity.

My experience with Kawabata is a circuitous road. As a teenager, I was very fascinated with the author Yukio Mishima, who wrote existentialist and dramatic set pieces that had made him one of the foremost Japanese modernists. In a Mishima biography written by John Nathan, he relates Mishima's admiration and respect for the older Kawabata, a sensei/kouhai relationship that struck many as ironic given the vast difference of their personalities. Mishima was bold and iconoclastic, while Kawabata was serene and seemingly removed from time. There was one particularly poignant anecdote about Mishima's conflicted feelings when Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968--Mishima (who actually nominated Kawabata to the Swedish academy) knew that the Nobel wouldn't be awarded to a Japanese author again within his lifetime. Two years later, Mishima would commit suicide through seppuku after participating in an attempted rightist coup.

My years have also tempered my fascination for these two writers, who seemed so preoccupied with the beauty in death and the mourning of a bygone era. For Kawabata in particular, the past is another country, and he is the perpetual exile.