“Yes, the Master is playing very carefully, very tightly. When one side
plays a tight game the other must too, or he will find his positions
crumbling. They have plenty of time, and it’s a very important game.”
It was a bland, harmless appraisal, and the appraisal I had hoped for was
not forthcoming. Perhaps it had been bold of him even to describe the game
as a close one.
But since I was in a state of great excitement over a game I had studied
intently through all its early phases, I had hoped for something more
profound, something touching on the spiritual.
Saitō Ryūtarō of the magazine Bungei Shunjū was convalescing at a
near-by inn. We stopped to see him. He had until recently been in the room
next to Wu’s.
“Sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep I
would hear stones clicking. It was a little hair-raising, actually.” And he
remarked upon the extraordinary dignity with which Wu saw visitors to the
door.
Shortly after the Master’s retirement match, I was invited with Wu to
Shimogamo Springs in South Izu, and I learned about dreams of Go.
Sometimes, I was told, a player discovers a brilliant play in his sleep.
Sometimes he remembers a part of the configuration after he awakens.
“I often have a feeling when I’m at the board that I have seen a game
before, and I wonder if it might have been in a dream.”
His most frequent adversary in dreams, said Wu, was Otaké of the
Seventh Rank.
