Play was resumed on the appointed day, November 25, a full week after
the preceding session. Onoda and Iwamoto, the judges, neither at the
moment occupied with the autumn tournament, had come the night before.
Cushion of vermilion damask, purple armrest—the Master’s place was a
priestly one. And indeed the line of Honnimbō, Masters of Go, had been
clerics from the day of the founder, Sansa, whose clerical name was Nikkai.
Yawata of the Association explained that the Master had in fact taken
orders and the priestly name Nichion and that he owned clerical robes. On a
wall above the Go board was a framed inscription by Hampō: “My Life, a
Fragment of a Landscape.” Gazing up at the six Chinese characters, which
leaned to the right, I remembered having read in the newspaper that this
same Dr. Takada Sanaé
was gravely ill. Hanging on another wall was an
account by Mishima Ki,
who used the nom de plume Chushu, of the
twelve famous places of Itō. On a hanging scroll in the next room, an eight-
mat room, was a poem in Chinese by a wandering mendicant monk.
A large oval brazier of paulownia was at the Master’s side. Because he
feared he might be coming down with a cold, he had water boiling on an
oblong brazier behind him. At the urging of Otaké he wrapped himself in a
muffler, and as further defense against the cold he was buried deep in a sort
of over-cloak with a knitted lining. He was running a slight fever, he said.
The sealed play, Black 105, was opened. The Master took only two
minutes to play White 106; and another period of deliberation began for
Otaké.
“Very odd,” Otaké muttered, as if in a trance. “I’m running out of time.
The great man is running out of time, forty whole hours of it. Very odd.
