To have these angry words from the Master, who had so nonchalantly
made his next play, was something of a shock. I felt in them a concentrated
essence, the Master doing battle from June down into December.
The Master had put the match together as a work of art. It was as if the
work, likened to a painting, were smeared black at the moment of highest
tension. That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and
takes the forms of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony
as of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one
party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A
masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an
adversary. That Black 121 having been a source of wonder and surprise and
doubt and suspicion for us all, its effect in cutting the flow and harmony of
the game cannot be denied.
Black 121 was much discussed among the professionals of the Go world
and in the larger world as well. To an amateur like me the play most
definitely seemed strange and unnatural, and not at all pleasing. But
afterwards there were professionals who came forward and said that it was
time for just such a play.
“I had been thinking that the time was ripe for Black 121 one of these
times,” said Otaké in his “Thoughts after Combat.”
Wu touched only lightly on the play. After a diagonal linking on White’s
part at E-19 or F-19, he said, “White need not respond as the Master did
with 122 even to Black’s 121, but could defend himself at H-19. Black
would thus find the possible plays from kō more limited.”
No doubt Otaké’s explanation would have been similar.
Black 121 had come as the battle at the center was reaching a climax,
and it had been a sealed play. It had angered the Master and aroused
suspicions in the rest of us. In a difficult situation, a player might, in effect,
make a sealed play like Black 121 as a temporary expedient, and until the
