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.
It was his good fortune to be born in the early flush of Meiji. Probably
never again will it be possible for anyone—for, say, Wu Ch’ing-yüan of our
own day—knowing nothing of the vale of tears in which the Master spent
his student years, to encompass in his individual person a whole panorama
of history. It will not be possible even though the man be more of a genius
at Go than the Master was. He was the symbol of Go itself, he and his
record shining through Meiji, Taisho, and Showa, and his achievement in
having brought the game to its modern flowering. The match to end the
career of the old Master should have had in it the affectionate attention of
his juniors, the finesse and subtlety of the warrior’s way, the mysterious
elegance of an art, everything to make it a masterpiece in itself; but the
Master could not stand outside the rules of equality.
When a law is made, the cunning that finds loopholes goes to work. One
cannot deny that there is a certain slyness among younger players, a slyness
which, when rules are written to prevent slyness, makes use of the rules
themselves. In the arsenal are myriad uses of the time allotment and the last
play before a recess, the sealed play; and so a Go match as a work of art is
besmirched. The Master, when he faced the board, was a man of old. He
knew nothing about all these refined latter-day tricks. Through his long
competitive career it had been for him the wholly natural thing that the
senior in rank should behave arbitrarily, calling a halt to the day’s session
upon having forced his opponent into an unfortunate play. There was no
time allotment. And the arbitrary ways that had been allowed the Master
had forged the Master’s art, incomparably superior to the latter-day game
and all its rules.
