Having submitted the seals for verification, Yawata opened the envelope.
He leaned over the board, the chart in his hand, and looked for Black 121.
He could not find it.
The player whose turn it is at the end of a session marks his sealed play
on the chart, which he puts in an envelope, showing it to no one. At the end
of the preceding session Otaké had stepped into the hall to set down his
play. The two players had put their seals on the envelope, which Yawata
had sealed in a larger envelope, kept in the safe of the inn through the
recess. Thus neither the Master nor Yawata knew Otaké’s play. The
possibilities were limited, however, and the play seemed fairly predictable
to us who were watching. We looked on in great excitement. Black 121
might well be the climax of the game.
Yawata should have found it immediately, but his eyes wandered over
the chart.
“Ah!” he said at length.
I was some slight distance from the board, and even after the Black stone
had been played I had difficulty finding it. When presently I did find it, I
was at a loss for an explanation. Off in the remote upper reaches of the
board, it lay apart from the fight that was coming to a climax at the center.
Even to an amateur like myself it had the look of a play from the kō
situation to a distant part of the board.
A wave of revulsion came over
me. Had Otaké taken advantage of the fact that Black 121 was a sealed
play? Had he put the device of the sealed play to tactical use? If so, he was
not being worthy of himself.
“I expected it to be near the center,” said Yawata, smiling wryly as he
drew back from the board.
Black had set out to destroy the massive White position from the lower
right toward the center of the board, and it seemed quite irrational that at
the very height of the attack he should play elsewhere. Understandably,
