White 116 took twenty-two minutes. The plays down to White 120 came
in quick succession. The standard pattern would have had the Master
falling quickly back with White 120, but he chose a firm block even though
the result was an unstable triangular formation. The air was tense, for a
showdown was at hand. If he had given ground it would have been to
concede a point or two, and he could not make even so small a concession
in so tight a match. He took just one minute for a play that could mean the
fine difference between victory and defeat, and for Otaké it was like cold
steel. And was the Master not already counting his points? He was counting
with quick little jerks of his head. The count pressed on relentlessly.
Games can be won and lost by a single point. If White was clinging
stubbornly to a mere two points, then it was for Black to step boldly
forward. Otaké squirmed. For the first time a blue vein stood out on the
round, childlike face. The sound of his fan was rough, irritable.
Even the Master, so sensitive to the cold, was nervously fanning himself.
I could not look at the two of them. Finally the Master let out his breath and
slipped into an easier posture.
“I start thinking and there’s no end to it,” said Otaké, whose play it was.
“I’m warm. You must forgive me.” And he took off his cloak. Prompted by
Otaké, the Master pulled back the neck of his kimono with both hands and
thrust his head forward. There was something a little comical about the act.
“It’s hot, it’s hot. Here I am taking forever again. I wish I didn’t have to.”
Otaké seemed to be fighting back a reckless impulse. “I have a feeling I’m
going to make a mistake. Make a botch of the whole thing.”
After meditating on the problem for an hour and forty-four minutes, he
sealed his Black 121 at three forty-three in the afternoon.
For the twenty-one plays during the three Itō sessions, Black 101 to
Black 121, Otaké had used eleven hours and forty-eight minutes. The
Master had used only one hour and thirty-seven minutes. Had it been an
