If this extraordinary time allotment was made at the Master’s behest,
then it may be said that he took upon himself a heavy burden. He had to
endure both his own illness and long periods of meditation on the part of
his adversary. Those thirty-four hours should argue the case convincingly
enough.
Again, the arrangement to play every fifth day was out of deference to
the Master’s age; but in fact it added to the burden. If both sides had used
the allotted time to the full, a total of eighty hours, and each session had
lasted five hours, then there would have been a total of sixteen sessions—
which is to say that even if the match had proceeded without interruption it
would have lasted some three months. Anyone who knows the spirit of Go
knows too that the required concentration cannot be maintained or the
tension endured for three whole months. They mean something akin to a
whittling away of the player’s physical being. The Go board is with a
player waking and sleeping, and a four-day recess therefore meant not rest
but exhaustion.
The recesses became even more trying after the Master fell ill. The
Master himself, of course, and the managers as well, wanted to be finished
with the match on the earliest day possible. He must be allowed to rest, and
there was a danger that he might collapse along the way.
He had even said to his wife, she told me sadly, that he no longer cared
who won, he only wanted to be finished with it all.
“And not once before in his whole life has he said that sort of thing.”
“He won’t improve as long as the match goes on,” one of the managers is
reported to have said, his head bowed. “I’ve sometimes thought he might
do well just to throw it over. But of course he couldn’t. His art means too
much to him. I haven’t really taken the possibility seriously, of course. It’s
just a thought that comes to me at bad moments.”
