the time one of his more interesting adversaries, also suffered at the Go
board from nervous enuresis. I have seen him get up ten times and more in
the course of four or five hours of play. Though he did not have Otaké’s
addiction to tea, there would all the same (and one marveled at the fact)
come sounds from the urinal each time he left the board. With Otaké the
difficulty did not stop at enuresis. One noted with curiosity that he would
leave his overskirt behind him in the hallway and his obi as well.
After six minutes of thought he played Black 3; and immediately he said,
“Excuse me, please,” and got up. He got up again when he had played
Black 5.
The Master had quietly lighted a cigarette from the package in his
kimono sleeve.
While deliberating Black 5, Otaké put his hands inside his kimono, and
folded his arms, and brought his hands down beside his knees, and brushed
an invisible speck of dust from the board, and turned one of the Master’s
white stones right side up. If the white stones had face and obverse, then
the face must be the inner, stripeless side of the clamshell; but few paid
attention to such details. The Master would indifferently play his stones
with either side up, and Otaké would now and again turn one over.
“The Master is so quiet,” Otaké once said, half jokingly. “The quiet is
always tripping me up. I prefer noise. All this quietness wears me down.”
Otaké was much given to jesting when he was at the board; but since the
Master offered no sign that he even noticed, the effect was somewhat
blunted. In a match with the Master, Otaké was unwontedly meek.
Perhaps the dignity with which the real professional faces the board
comes with middle age, perhaps the young have no use for it. In any case,
younger players indulge all manner of odd quirks. To me the strangest was
a young player of the Fourth Rank who, at the grand tournament, would
open a literary magazine on his knee and read a story while waiting for his
