A reporter from the Nichinichi chanced to be visiting him too. The
competitions, he said, had proved extremely popular. Every Saturday
readers were invited to submit opinions as to how at certain crucial points
the match should proceed.
“This week’s problem is Black 91,” I ventured to add.
“Black 91?” The expression on the Master’s face was as if he were
gazing at a Go board.
I regretted my remark. One was not to talk about Go. But I went on to
explain: “White jumps one space, and Black plays on the diagonal away
from himself.”
“Oh, that. But there’s nothing for him to do but play next to his own
stone either on the horizontal or on the diagonal. I imagine plenty of people
will come up with the answer.” As he spoke he brought himself into an
upright kneeling position, knees together, head up. It was his posture at the
Go board. There was a cold, severe dignity in it. For a time it was as if, face
to face with a void, he had lost all consciousness of his own identity.
It did not seem, now or at the linked match, that devotion to his art made
him take each move so seriously, or that he was overdoing his
responsibilities as the Master. It seemed rather that what must happen was
happening.
When a younger player was trapped into a game with the Master, he was
left quite exhausted at the end of it. There was, for example, a one-lance
handicap game
he played with Otaké during our stay at Hakoné: it lasted
from ten in the morning until six in the evening. Then there was a chess
game during a three-match Go contest between Otaké and Wu, sponsored
by this same Tokyo Nichinichi. The Master did the commentary and I was
reporter for the second match. The Master forced Fujisawa Kuranosuké of
the Fifth Rank, who also happened to be present, into a game of chess
which lasted from noon through the afternoon and evening and on until
