The upper central regions of the board are delicately divided between the
two, and the center and the regions immediately below are neutral. The
counting of points is extremely complicated. It is significant that at the end
of the match not even the Master himself has the precise count. A very
special sort of visual faculty seems required for the final summing up, and,
one might say, a sort of kinetic faculty too. Persons who know Go well
have been able to give me a reasonably clear account of the 1938 game
only by lining the stones up one by one as they were in fact played.
When, in 1954, The Master of Go first appeared in book form, it was
somewhat longer than the version translated here. The shorter version is
Mr. Kawabata’s own favorite, for it is the one included in the most recent
edition of his “complete works.” The portions excised from the 1954
version fall between the end of the match and the Master’s death.
I am very greatly in debt to Miss Ibuki Kazuko and Mr. Yanagita Kunio,
both of the Chuo Koron Publishing Company in Tokyo. Out of sheer
kindness, they were more help in solving the mysteries of the text and the
game than a platoon of paid researchers could have been.
E.G.S.
January 1972
