“With me?” I was startled. The two looked at me. The maid led me to a
large room in which Otaké was waiting alone. Though there was a brazier,
the room was chilly.
“I am very sorry indeed to bother you. You have been a great help over
the months, but I have decided I have no recourse but to forfeit the game.”
His speech was abrupt and hurried. “I cannot go on as things are.”
“Oh?”
“And I at least wanted to apologize.”
I was only a battle reporter, scarcely a person to whom he need
apologize. That I should all the same be the recipient of formal apologies
seemed evidence of our esteem for each other. My position had changed. I
could not let matters stand as they were.
I had been a passive observer of the disputes at Hakoné and after. They
had not been my concern, and I had offered no opinion. Even now he was
not asking my advice. He was informing me of his decision. Sitting with
him and hearing of his tribulations, however, I felt for the first time that I
should speak up, and indeed that I might possibly offer my services as
mediator.
I spoke boldly. I said that as challenger in this the Master’s last game he
was fighting in single combat, and he was also fighting a larger battle. He
was the representative of a new day. He was being carried on by the
currents of history. He had been through a year-long tournament to
determine who would be the Master’s last challenger. Kubomatsu and
Maeda had been the winners of an earlier elimination tournament among
players of the Sixth Rank, and they had been joined by Suzuki, Segoé,
Kato, and Otaké of the Seventh Rank in a tournament in which every player
met every other. Otaké had defeated all five opponents. He had defeated
two of his own teachers, Suzuki and Kubomatsu. Suzuki, it was said, would
have bitter regrets for the rest of his life. In his prime he had won more
