Go came to Japan from China. Real Go, however, developed in Japan.
The art of Go in China, now and three hundred years ago, does not bear
comparison with that in Japan. Go was elevated and deepened by the
Japanese. Unlike so many other civilized arts brought from China, which
developed gloriously in China itself, Go flowered only in Japan. The
flowering of course came in recent centuries, when Go was under the
protection of the Edo Shogunate. Since the game was first imported into
Japan a thousand years ago, there were long centuries when its wisdom
went uncultivated. The Japanese opened the reserves of that wisdom, the
“road of the three hundred and sixty and one,”
which the Chinese had
seen to encompass the principles of nature and the universe and of human
life, which they had named the diversion of the immortals, a game of
abundant spiritual powers. It is clear that in Go the Japanese spirit has
transcended the merely imported and derivative.
Perhaps no other nation has developed games as intellectual as Go and
Oriental chess. Perhaps nowhere else in the world would a match be
allotted eighty hours extended over three months. Had Go, like the No
drama and the tea ceremony, sunk deeper and deeper into the recesses of a
strange Japanese tradition?
Shūsai the Master told us at Hakoné of his travels in China. His remarks
had to do chiefly with whom he had played and where and at what
handicap.
“So I suppose the best players in China would be good amateurs in
Japan?” I asked, thinking that Chinese Go must after all be fairly strong.
“Something of the sort, I should think. They may be a touch weaker, but
I should think a strong amateur there would be a match for a strong amateur
here. They have no professionals, of course.”
“If their amateurs and ours are about equal, then you might say that they
have the makings of professionals?”
