games than he had lost as Black against the Master’s White, and the Master
had avoided the next stage, at which they would play Black and White in
alternation.
Perhaps, out of feelings for his old teacher, Otaké had wanted
to let Suzuki have one last chance at the Master. Yet he had sent his teacher
to defeat. And when he faced Kubomatsu, each of them with four victories,
in the decisive match, he was again facing a teacher. One might therefore
say that Otaké was playing for his two teachers in this contest with the
Master. The young Otaké was no doubt a better representative of the active
forces than were elders like Suzuki and Kubomatsu. His incomparable
friend and rival, Wu of the Sixth Rank, would have been an equally
appropriate representative, but Wu had five years earlier tried a radical
opening against the Master and lost. And even though Wu had won a
professional title, he had at the time been of the Fifth Rank, scarcely an
eminence from which to face the Master at no handicap; and so the match
had been of a different order from this the Master’s last match. Some
twelve or thirteen years before, and some years too before his match with
Wu, the Master had been challenged by Karigané of the Seventh Rank. The
contest was really between the Go Association and the rival Kiseisha, and,
though Karigané was among the Master’s rivals, he had over the years been
the underdog. The Master won another victory, and that was all. And now
“the invincible Master” was staking his title for the last time. The match
had a far different import from those with Karigané and Wu. It was not
likely that problems of succession would arise immediately if Otaké were
to win, but the retirement match meant the end of an age and the bridge to a
new age. There would be new vitality in the world of Go. To forfeit the
match would be to interrupt the flow of history. The responsibility was a
heavy one. Was Otaké really to let personal feelings and circumstances
prevail? Otaké had thirty-five years to go before he reached the Master’s
age—five more than the sum by the Oriental count of his years thus far. He
had been reared by the Association in a day of prosperity, and the Master’s
youthful tribulations were of a different world. The Master had carried the
