This is a remarkable Kawabata novel that offers an enjoyable and effortless reading experience.

The portrayal of early Showa Japan is truly captivating, with its meticulous details regarding resorts and temples in the vicinity of Tokyo, train schedules, and newspaper reporting.

The plot is lucid and straightforward, which sets it apart from some of Kawabata's other more renowned novels.

I discovered that the broader commentary - concerning Japan's progression towards modernity while leaving traditions in the past - was far more fascinating than the specific details of the core drama within the book, namely the final Go game and the climactic challenge for the Master.

Having played some Go myself, I possess a basic understanding of the game. However, I still found myself becoming somewhat lost in the rather extensive details surrounding the moves.

The fortuitous encounter with an American on a train and Kawabata's commentary (through the narrator's voice) on the seriousness and commitment to winning among the Japanese and Chinese truly caught my attention.

It provides valuable insights into Kawabata's perspectives on the East versus the West. Kawabata penned The Master of Go during and after WWII, and I firmly believe that these comments can be regarded as the quiet confidence of the defeated and a determination to compete with the West.

The novel "Maestrul de go" by Yasunari Kawabata does not belong to the type of readings that I usually choose. However, being one of his most well-known works, I decided to give it a chance.

It bored me very often. But the plus side was that the volume is short and somewhat informative. Moreover, the author portrays the master in a way that makes you want to know what he is thinking.

Kawabata's writing style is unique, with a certain elegance and delicacy. He describes the characters and the setting in great detail, creating a vivid and immersive world.

Although the story may not be the most exciting, it does offer some insights into human nature and the meaning of life. It makes you think about the relationships between people and the choices we make.

In conclusion, "Maestrul de go" is not a book for everyone, but if you are interested in Japanese literature or want to explore a different kind of story, it might be worth a read.

Knowing very little about Go, I was truly in the dark about what to anticipate. However, Kawabata's vivid descriptions managed to bring the game to vivid life.

Each gameplay seemed to be personified, making it an engaging experience. I particularly relished the themes of generational difference and the fading of the "old way" which was presented as neither strictly good nor bad but an inevitable process.

It was interesting to note that the battle was not solely between the old master and the young expert. Instead, it delved deeper into their internal struggles. I also took pleasure in envisioning Go as an art form.

Not sure if it was the pacing in the middle or perhaps due to my own qualifications that made it take me a bit longer to get through, but once I reached the last 40 pages, it all seemed to speed by.

The quotes such as "What may at first sight have seemed passive was in fact a strong undercurrent of aggression and an unshakable confidence. What may have seemed mere tenacity had a surging power" and "Like the flow of water or the drifting of clouds a White formation quietly took shape over the lower reaches of the board in response to the careful and steady pressure from Black" added a layer of beauty and depth to the narrative.

Maybe I will make it a tradition to read a Kawabata novel each year? I do indeed enjoy his descriptions immensely.

The serenity of this book is truly something that I admire with great intensity.

The writing style seems to be very much in the late style, where a master is completely confident in his own instincts and capabilities. He is content to simply start from point x and then see where he ultimately ends up.

Every place he arrives at, it goes without saying, is excellent. This book also serves as a reminder that great novels can be about absolutely anything.

The eternal strength of the novel form lies in its elasticity. When translated into practical terms, I believe that means we should never overly labor the beginning of a novel.

Instead, we should just plunge ahead with the full realization that, in the early stages, even bad ideas can hold value.

We should have the courage to explore and see where the story takes us, trusting in the power of the novel form to adapt and evolve.

This book has taught me the importance of embracing the unknown and allowing the creative process to unfold naturally.

It has shown me that sometimes, the best ideas come from the most unexpected places.

So, the next time I start writing a novel, I will remember the lessons I have learned from this book and approach the task with a sense of adventure and openness.

I will not be afraid to make mistakes or have bad ideas, because I know that they are all part of the journey towards creating a great work of fiction.

Kawabata has become my latest literary fixation. I am determined to read everything he has ever written, although I haven't made much progress yet. "Scarlet Gang" was experimental and truly amazing. "Snow County", "Thousand Cranes", and "Palm-of-Hand Stories" are sparse, gentle, and apocalyptic in a sense of love. And "The Master of Go" is completely different from the others.

Kawabata fictionalizes an actual final game of Go that he covered as a journalist. It is a last contest between one of the most famed players, who is terminally ill and failing, and a younger, distraught player of some skill.

It leans towards a more abstruse and symbolist structure and hue than his other earlier novels. In Japan, it is considered his best work, and Kawabata himself regarded it as his only "complete" novel.

It doesn't entirely lack the quiet devastation of the works mentioned above. Instead, it takes a different approach, framing the story through the nuances of the game itself while chronicling the slow, inevitable death of a master.

The pictures had an air of unreality about them. This might have stemmed from the face of a man, the epitome of tragedy, who was so disciplined in an art that he had forfeited the better part of reality.

Just like "Kokoro" by Natsume Sōseki or the majority of Yukio Mishima's work, "Master Of Go" belongs to that niche of Japanese culture that favors the "old" (Meiji-era) and opposes the "new" (Western influence, loss of values, etc.).

It could be argued that the Master was tormented in his final match by modern rationalism, where fussy rules reigned supreme, and all the grace and elegance of Go as an art had vanished. It completely disregarded respect for elders and placed no importance on mutual respect as human beings. The beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled from the way of Go. Everything had become science and regulation.

It details the retirement match of the Go master/Honinbō Shūsai against Kitani Minoru (referred to as Otake in the book). You can explore the steps of the match here. Kawabata penned newspaper columns about the six-month-long match, which he later revised into this book. A modicum of knowledge about the game might be beneficial for reading, but the rules are relatively straightforward and easy to grasp.

The match commenced in Tokyo on June 26, 1938, at the Kōyōkan Restaurant in Shiba Park and concluded on December 4 in Itō, at the Dankōen Inn. A single game endured for nearly half a year and consisted of fourteen sessions. My report was serialized in sixty-four installments.

You can overlook any Go-specific terms in the book as it's not truly about the game. Instead, it delves into Japan and its purported uniqueness: China's Go isn't "real Go" as it allegedly developed in Japan; other foreigners have no understanding of Go; "the spirit of Go" is absent, and so on. If you can tolerate that, then give it a go.

Two stones....two individuals. One game.....one world. The yin-yang philosophies sprouting from the wooden bowls on to a 19 x 19 arena. The small stones carrying the burden of altering destinies. In the realm of shōsetsu, Kawabata chronicles a factual reportage of a decisive championship game of Go held in 1938, between Honnimbō Shūsai and Mr. Kitano Minora. Abiding the culture of literary fiction, Kawabata confers fabricated identities to the players as well as to himself (Mr. Uragami) in this epic struggle that spans over the period of nearly six months.

**(Title holder Honnimbō Shūsai's last official game, his opponent being the 7th Class Mr. Kitani)**

The game of Go is simple in its fundamentals and infinitely complex in the execution of them. It is not what might be called a game of moves, as chess and checkers..... The game commences with the stone being placed at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal squares. The Black stone always taking the privilege of an opening move. The devious tap of the stone on the wooden grid echoes the hysteria of a transitional era. New laws and new tactical regulation overruled the aristocratic stubbornness by refined trickery. The strategic moves alternating the white and black stones delineated the struggle of aristocracy vs. liberalism; youth vs. old age; new vs. old; and art vs. gaming pragmatism.

The frail and ill Master who revered the tradition of Go as a way of life and art, painfully observed the transition of his beloved painting into the commercial entity bound by scientific regulations and competitive aggressiveness. An inhabitant of the Meiji Era, the Master finds himself standing on the edge of modernity that challenges traditional mores and progress in a strange world with cries for equality. Mr. Uragami, in his reportage addresses the Japanese landscape that is suspended between the resistance of the old cultural mores and the democratic post-war revolution. The Master who was accustomed to conservative prerogatives struggled to rationalize the tactical moves of his young adversary Mr. Otake. The unorthodox Black-69 move struck like a spray of black ink spoiling the rhythm of the Master’s harmonic artistic play. Uragami wonders if the “invincible” Master was now as feeble as the scrawny legs that marred the authoritative illusion. Were the long recesses and the venue changes between the games, a defense from the fury of the Black stones? The Black stones were insensitive to the pleas of an aged clamshell stone. The exhaustion of insomnia that ravaged the serenity during the four day long recesses was now curious about the loneliness that sprang from the nostalgia of a waning art. The frail Master with all his might hung on to the last threads of his invincibility.

On the bridge of transition was the battle of the Master to restore the vitality of the very game that made him bleed, justified? Is the birth of nostalgia, the loneliness of change more agonizing than physical death? Mr. Uragami poses a baffling question whether the metaphoric notion of “sealed in cans” would make our lives happier without our territories being invaded or are we equipped to forfeit our conquered territories to smell the fresh winds of change?

Go is fierce; it is a territorial game. Territory called “ji” in Japanese is formed by a continuous line bounding the adversarial stones in a captured territory. Go becomes the medium through which various boundaries are pitted against a strategic battle of sustainability and perishability. Otake’s robust and patiently timed moves paves a path to a modern strategic system that abides the essence of time and laws challenging the Master and capturing territories by abstract conditions of Justice. Mr. Uragami take this territorial battle further into the lives of the players and the existence of Go as a traditional art and as a embedded culture of a nation. The Game of Go that has its origins in China about 4000 years ago is now an inhabitant of the Japanese culture. It has been explored and improvised by the Japanese societal mores for more than 1200 years to be an important artistic heritage of the Japanese cultural territory. The threat of this game being captured by foreign territories becomes conspicuous when Mr. Uragami expresses his skepticism over whether a foreigner (Dr.Dueball’s Germany - the game had attracted players from America) would do justice to the game of Go as he will be unaware of the history of the game and would treat it is a sheer game and not art that had become a way of life to many Japanese Go players. Does the mystery and the nobility of a game is diminished if played away from the land of its origin? Is a sovereign heritage greater than the art of the game? These similar worries was expressed by the Master when in a bid to reclaim his genius over the game, he witnessed Otake’s severe game brimming with scientific precision and slyness. The striking of the stones was echoing the violence of a tragic chasm of a competitive world that had bestowed the title of “invincibility” to the Master crafting a grand super-powerful figure. The Master became a citizen of a hallucinatory world where he achieved a winning immortality; a world where he believed he could not afford to lose. The mentioning of the fact that the Master had not played the Black stones for more than 30 years; inferences can be drawn of a possibility of the White stones being the honored territory of a Master. Is then this illusionary territory that brings tragic consequence when the sanguine vagueness is marred by the loneliness of reality? When does the player become larger than the game? When do the mores of cultural heritage become greater than its sovereign nation? When does the move ‘Black-69’ strike like the flash of a dagger piercing into the safeguarded territory of the player capturing his stone wall?

The continuity of the stones is established by placing them in row in a horizontal and vertical manner. Diagonally placed stones are vulnerable for a territorial captive attack. A lonely stone is unfavourable to the playing contestant. Did the loneliness, the thought of him being the probable last surviving ‘Master of Go’ from the Meiji era made the Master vulnerable to Otake’s stubborn ambition? Like an isolated stone that becomes less powerful, did the seclusion of his artistic prowess in the modern world made him defenseless? Mr. Uragami contradicts the play of contiguity by illustrating a breakage brought by modernity in the world of Go and its players. In the play of black upon white and white upon black, the threat of forfeiture prevailed right from the personal feelings of the players to the fate of the game in the altered Japanese landscape. In the emerging new age and fresh vitality of Go would the frequent threat of forfeiture interrupt the contiguity of history and traditions leading to the collapse of the stone’s sanguineness?

A stone has a life and can be killed when entirely surrounded by the adversarial stone. In the war like game the stones and the players amalgamate into one whole existence. The notion of “sealed in tin cans” depicted during the play keeps the player from external disturbance. The game and its strategies follow the players until the game is over and even thereafter, as in the case of the Master. For a Go player each free moment is a risk management session increasing the pressures of time and the deliberation over the future moves brings certain quirks and nervous addictions. The sanity of life is found in the madness of Go. Unlike Mr. Otake, the Master was bled by the game of Go. The shadows of Go followed the Master hovering into the vagueness of his existence. As a true artist sculpting the Go art, the Master resisted from judging the persona of the opponent as it perverted the sanctity of the game. The Master calculated his every move even when he played a game of chess, billiards and mahjong. When the Master played his moves and the game consumed his life, at times making him lose the realization of his own identity. The stones had sealed his destiny as a ‘Go Master’ in a can of loneliness and the shrewd game has made him a sort of a martyr. Mr. Uragami who himself was an ardent fan of the Master, infers that there are two types of players: - one who are complacent with their game output and the other who meticulously enhance their art; the word satisfaction being a rarity in their game. The Master belonged to the latter. The Master had become a tragic figure, a ghostlike existence. Novelist Naoki Sanjugo who wrote himself to death asserts, “If one chooses to look upon Go as valueless, then absolutely valueless it is; and if one chooses to look upon it as a thing of value, the a thing of absolute value it is.” So where does a player stop from not letting the game consume him? Is the art of the game that creates martyrs of its soldiers? The pleasure of the game brings seclusion from worldly exhilarations of life. The unadulterated sleep of a child is far fetched blessing in the cursed insomniac world ridden by chaotic configurations. When does the harmonic monochromatic ballet of Go become a war of spirit and destiny? Is then life greater than a man or is the man greater than the life? The long coarse white –hair on the Master’s eyebrow; the symbol of life’s longevity knew the answer and so did White-130.

Under the morbid tides of destiny the death of a stone. The game ends. Hope ends..... A new stone is astutely placed on an intersection. Once again, the game of Go begins, deciding a new destiny for its Master.

“I could not pretend to know much more about Go than Kume did; but even so it seemed to me that the unmoving stones, as I gazed at them from the side of the board, spoke to me as living creatures. The sound of the stones on the board seemed to echo vastly through another world.”

This book was a profound meditation. It did not aim to teach me the mechanics of playing Go. I knew and still know precious little about the game of Go, other than the fact that it is played with black and white stones on a board with a 19 x 19 grid. What this remarkable book imparted to me was the lesson of how a devout and unwavering dedication to an art form can pave the way to a profounder understanding of oneself.

The book is firmly rooted in an actual Go tournament that took place in 1938. It was a clash between a retiring master player, Honinbo Shūsai, and a younger, up-and-coming talent, Minoru Kitani. The game unfolded over a span of nearly 6 months. Kawabata, who was engaged by the sponsoring newspaper to cover the match, skillfully adapted his serialized reports into this captivating chronicle-novel.

It delves into the intense struggle and the鲜明 differences between the two contrasting playing styles, the decline of an aging player losing his once-commanding power, and the aggression of a younger player. It also explores the tensions between old traditions and new pragmatism.

There was an inexplicably calming quality about this book. This could perhaps be attributed in part to the fact that as I was engrossed in reading The Master of Go, I was staying in the very same inn that Kawabata had occupied during the initial sessions of the match.

This from the Fukuzumi-ro Inn:

The Nobel Prize winning author, Kawabata Yasunari, adored this room where no sounds of the stream could be heard. He would sleep during the day, laboriously work through the night, and have a bowl of rice with tea every midnight. And in the next morning, people from magazine houses or newspaper offices would collect the manuscripts from between the sliding doors. He had a gaze that could seemingly kill, but I knew deep down that he was a gentle soul.

A beautiful, semi-fictional account unfolds of a captivating 1938 go game. The old and ill Master of Go, known as the Meijin, squares off against his younger, modern challenger. Kawabata masterfully delves into the players' inner struggles, painting a vivid picture of their emotional turmoil.

At the same time, the opposition between old and new Japan looms large. Japan was engaged in an imperial war in China during that period, a fact that is barely mentioned yet serves as a significant backdrop. The novel, published in 1951 after Japan's surrender, allows readers to sense the historical context and the profound changes that were taking place in the country.

The game of go becomes a metaphor for the larger conflicts and transitions in Japanese society. As the players battle it out on the go board, their individual struggles mirror the broader tensions between tradition and modernity, between the old ways and the new. Kawabata's细腻描写 brings this story to life, making it a compelling exploration of human nature and historical change.

A wonderful novel dedicated to the game of Go, one of the most complex despite its relatively simple rules. This edition presents diagrams of the game's progression. The focus is on the duel, inspired by real events, between an old master and a young outsider. The game lasts for a very long time, with interruptions of several weeks.

Beyond the confrontation, one of the advanced interpretations in the preface is that through this story, the author wanted to depict the gradual mutation in Japan from aristocratic values from the feudal past, consisting of excellence, honor, and sacrifice, towards more pragmatic democratic values, based on calculation and efficiency and not burdened by all the tedious etiquette of the old ethics. An evolution that the author would nostalgically deplore. Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis.

The game of Go is a fascinating subject, and this novel delves deep into its intricacies. The detailed diagrams help readers better understand the strategic moves and the development of the game. The duel between the old master and the young outsider is not just a battle of skills but also a clash of different values and generations. The long duration of the game, with its interruptions, adds to the tension and anticipation. The author's interpretation in the preface provides a deeper layer of meaning, highlighting the social and cultural changes in Japan. Overall, this novel offers an engaging and thought-provoking exploration of the game of Go and its significance.

Pre-war Japanese culture was strikingly distinct from that of the pre-war West, and it is nearly unfathomable to Americans in the present day. The idea that a game could endure for 6 months, with each player being allotted 40 hours and the stress being so intense that even younger players struggle to maintain concentration is equally unimaginable to us. The formality of rules and agreements, combined with the typical Japanese fixation on hierarchy, respect, and engagement, becomes even more intricate when any concession can provide the opponent with a slight advantage, and a slight advantage is all that is required to emerge victorious.

While the undefeated master makes the move that sets his fateful match on its inevitable course at White 160, it is in Chapter 28 that the author takes his turn. During a train ride home, he is in a "pensive" state, contemplating the status of the ongoing match when a "tall foreigner" approaches him at the luggage rack and accurately identifies his oddly shaped box as a portable magnetic Go board. The foreigner is an American, and he is "fascinated" by the game. He requests the author to play a game with him, and they proceed to play for at least the next four hours, with the passengers eventually lining up to watch.

What astonishes and troubles the author, who is a writer covering the master's last match for Japanese newspapers, is that the American loses repeatedly, "effortlessly," and without a care. The American's style of play is "utterly foreign." And the game itself is also foreign even to most Japanese, yet they follow the match through a serialized report in the daily newspaper, spread over 64 columns in 6 months.

I have no clue how to play the game, but I relished the struggle to understand the various moves as they were elucidated and diagrammed along the way. The game served merely as a means for Kawabata to assist us in understanding the people, the culture of Go, and, in a sense, the culture of pre-war Japan. That was a culture that the world will never witness again. Here is a glimpse into it.

When I watched "Reply 1988", my favorite character was Choi Taek. He was a baduk player, and I didn't know anything about baduk before. Then I learned that it was a strategic game with many rules and regulations. The black and white stones reminded me of chess and checkers, but the board was larger, the game progressed slowly, and it was impossible to tell which player had won when the game was over.

Of course, there was a reason for this. I saw everything slowly. Baduk, also known as Go, had entered my life even if I was only a distant observer.

But I never thought of reading a book about a Go game.

This changed when it came to Kawabata.

Kawabata describes the match between the undefeated master Hon'inbō Shūsai and the rising star Ōtake, which lasted for 6 months. The reflections of the old and the new, youth and age, tradition and the present are embodied in these two players.

Although it was serialized in a magazine in 1951, the match took place in 1938, a critical period for Japan. In the midst of the war with China and on the verge of World War II.

In a story where the ending is clear from the beginning, the author ties the reader with details.

I really liked "The Master of Go", which is also regarded as Yasunari Kawabata's most complete work. But I would also recommend that you don't get to know the author through this work.

Translated by Habibe Salğar, with the cover application by Ayşe Merdit.