Introduction
Mr. Kawabata has described The Master of Go as “a faithful chronicle-
novel.” The word used, of course, is not “novel” but shōsetsu, a rather more
flexible and generous and catholic term than “novel.” Frequently what
would seem to the Western reader a piece of autobiography or a set of
memoirs, somewhat embroidered and colored but essentially nonfiction all
the same, is placed by the Japanese reader in the realm of the shōsetsu.
So it is with The Master of Go. It contains elements of fiction, but it is
rather more chronicle than novel, a sad, elegant piece of reportage, based
upon a 1938 Go match, the course of which was precisely as described in
this “chronicle-novel,” and upon which Mr. Kawabata reported for the twin
Osaka and Tokyo newspapers that today both bear the name Mainichi.
Certain elements of fiction are obvious. Mr. Kawabata gives himself a
fictitious name, Uragami, and apparently, though the matter could be a
small failure of memory, assigns himself a different age from that which is
actually his. The Master is known by his own name, or rather his
professional name, but, as if to emphasize that the Master is the
protagonist, always at the center of things, Mr. Kawabata also assigns the
adversary, in real life Mr. Kitani Minoru, a fictitious name. The complex
treatment of time, with the action beginning and ending at the same point,
and the delicate, impressionistic descriptions of setting and season are
further justification for the expression “chronicle-novel.”
But the most complex element of fiction probably is in the delineation of
the Master himself. Persons who knew him in real life have told us that in
addition to being almost grotesquely diminutive, he gave an impression of
deviousness and even of a certain foxlike slyness. He had, at least to the
casual observer, little of the nobility with which Mr. Kawabata has
endowed him. Mr. Kawabata’s achievement thus transcends faithful
chronicling and becomes fictional characterization of a virtuoso order.
