The Master had used only ten minutes, and Otaké four hours and
fourteen minutes. In all Otaké had used twenty-one hours and twenty
minutes, more than half the unprecedented forty-hour allotment.
Onoda and Iwamoto, the judges, were absent, participating in the autumn
tournament.
“There is something dark about Otaké’s game these days,” I had heard
Iwamoto say at Hakoné.
“There are bright and dark in Go?”
“There are indeed. A game takes on its own shading. There’s something
very cheerless about Otaké’s. Something dark. Bright and dark have
nothing to do with winning and losing. I’m not saying that Otaké’s game is
any the worse for it.”
Otaké had a disturbingly unbalanced record. He had lost all eight of his
matches at the spring tournament. Then, in the special tournament
sponsored by the Nichinichi to choose the Master’s last challenger, he had
won all his matches.
I had not thought the Black game against the Master especially cheerful.
There was something oppressive about it, something that seemed to push
up from deep within, like a strangled cry. Concentrated power was on
collision course, one looked in vain for a free and natural flow. The opening
moves had been heavy and a sort of inexorable gnawing had followed.
I have also heard that there are two sorts of players, those who are
forever dissatisfied with themselves and those who are forever confident.
Otaké may be put in the former category, Wu in the latter.
Otaké, the dissatisfied sort, could not, in what he himself had called a
close and delicate game, allow himself the luxury of easy, cavalier play—
not while the outcome remained in doubt.
