On the night before the next session, scheduled for August 10, an effort
was mounted to overcome Otaké’s objections. A certain childish
perverseness in Otaké made him say no when others said yes, and a certain
obduracy kept him from assenting when assent seemed the obvious thing;
and then the newspaper reporters and the functionaries of the Go
Association were not good persuaders. No solution was at hand. Yasunaga
Hajimé of the Fourth Rank was a friend who knew the workings of Otaké’s
mind, and he had had much experience at mediating disputes. He stepped
forward to make Otaké see reason; but this dispute proved too much for
him.
Late in the night Mrs. Otaké came with her baby from Hiratsuka. She
wept as she argued with her husband. Her speech was warm and gentle and
without a trace of disorder even as she wept; nor was there a suggestion in
her manner of the virtuous wife seeking to edify and reform. Her tearful
plea was quite sincere. I looked on with admiration.
Her father kept a hot-spring inn at Jigokudani in Shinshū. The story of
how Otaké and Wu shut themselves up at Jigokudani to study new openings
is famous in the Go world. I myself had long known of Mrs. Otaké’s
beauty, indeed since she was a girl. A young poet coming down from Shiga
Heights had taken note of the beautiful sisters at Jigokudani and passed on
his impressions to me.
I was caught a little off balance by the dutiful, somewhat drab housewife
I saw at Hakoné; and yet in the figure of the mother quite given over to
domestic duties, which allowed little time to worry about her own
appearance, I could still see the pastoral beauty of her mountain girlhood.
The gentle sagacity was immediately apparent. And I thought I had never
seen so splendid a baby. In that boy of eight months was such strength and
vigor that I thought I could see a certain epic quality in Otaké himself. The
boy had clear, delicate skin.
