Andrew Grant's Go History Pages

INTRODUCTION

I've always been interested in history, and I'm also interested in go - so I suppose it was inevitable that I'd become interested in the history of go. But studying go history was difficult - very little material was available on the subject, and what there was consisted of a jumble of scattered anecdotes in various books and magazines. I did my best to make some kind of continuous historical narrative out of this, and gradually built up a picture of the development of go in Japan. (As for China and Korea, I knew, and still know, nowhere near enough to write a history like this one.) All the same, I still wished that somebody would put the existing historical material into a single book.

Eventually, I started to write it myself - purely for my own reference and certainly with no thoughts of publication. My first (hand-written) draft was pretty patchy, and it only covered the Edo period (1600-1868). All the same, by the time I'd finished, it seemed a shame not to submit it to the British Go Journal.

I decided that if I were going to do this I ought to widen its scope a bit, so I added an introductory chapter on pre-Edo period go and several chapters to bring the story up to the present day. "Four Hundred Years of Japanese Go" started serialisation in Journal 85 (Winter 1991), and ran over twenty-three instalments. (I had more instalments to come, as you will see, but after the first twenty-three the BGJ Editor had had enough!) It has been revised many times since in the light of new information (notably the appearance of "The Go Player's Almanac" in 1992), and is now reasonably complete.

All the same, this was still a serialisation; what I wanted was a single book. So here it is – admittedly not in book form, but on the World Wide Web (the ultimate vanity publisher). Due to continuing revisions the text isn't identical, and in many places isn't even close, to that which appeared in the Journal. Some of the accompanying games are different too.

Andrew Grant

 Note on names: All Japanese names are given in the Oriental style, surname first. The names of go players can be confusing, since in the Edo period (and to a lesser extent today) go players changed their names at various stages of their careers. A good example of this is Gen'an Inseki, who changed his name five times (but was never actually called Gen'an Inseki). Originally surnamed Hashimoto, he took the name Hattori Rittetsu on joining the minor Hattori school, later changing his name again to Hattori Intetsu. On transferring to the Inoue school, he became Inoue Ansetsu, and on becoming Inoue head changed his name yet again, to Inoue Inseki, in accordance with Inoue tradition. It was not until he retired that he adopted the name Gen'an (without the Inseki). Gen'an's successor, Setsuzan, went one better with a record six name changes: Todani Umetaro / Kadono Dowa / Kadono Chuzaemon / Mizutani Junsaku / Inoue Shutetsu / Inoue Inseki / Setsuzan. The scope for confusion is such that, with a few exceptions, I have ignored such changes entirely.

Note on dates: The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in Japan until January 1st, 1873; dates before this are given according to the traditional Japanese lunar calendar, which lags behind the Gregorian calendar by one to two months. Since a lunar year is only 354 days long, about once every three years an extra "intercalary month" had to be inserted into the year to keep it in step with the seasons. To avoid confusion I refer to lunar months by number - hence "the First Month" means the first month of the lunar year (which began on the day of the second new moon following the winter solstice). Months in the Gregorian calendar are referred to by name - January, February etc. Years are given Western-style throughout, except in the game records, where years are given in both the traditional Japanese and Western styles.

Note on games: Each game relates to the period discussed in the foregoing chapter, and involves players mentioned in the chapter. If the game has historical significance and is mentioned in the text, so much the better, but this has not always been possible. This is not a teaching text and so I have kept commentary to a minimum, only commenting when lack of commentary makes the significance of the game impossible to understand. Some of these games are commented in the English-language go literature. SGF files of each game are included for downloading. Thanks are due to Alan Crossman who provided these files.

CHAPTER 1. Mediaeval Go

 Go is played throughout the Far East, and in modern times there is intense rivalry between the Chinese, Japanese and Korean professional elites. International go matches have become keenly fought affairs in which the result is eagerly awaited by enthusiasts in all three countries. Whoever wins, the result is never a foregone conclusion.

However, this state of affairs is only a recent development. Chinese and Korean go have only caught up with Japan in the present century, and in the case of China, only in the last twenty years or so. Before then, Japan stood supreme as the unquestioned world leader in go, so much so that it could be (and was) assumed that the Japanese champion was the world's strongest player.

How did Japan achieve this position of dominance? To answer this question it is necessary to go back over four hundred years, to the meeting of a samurai warlord and a Buddhist monk which touched off the golden age of go. However, to appreciate the developments which took place during this period, it is useful to have some knowledge of the state of the game before then.

It is generally believed in Japan that go was introduced there in about 740 AD, by one Kibi no Makibi, who had been sent as an ambassador to the Chinese court and learnt the game there. This is not strictly true. Go had been known in Japan for over a hundred years at the time of Kibi's visit, and its introduction may date to as early as the sixth century. However, its popularity in Japanese court circles may be the result of Kibi's report that the game was highly esteemed at the Chinese court.

At first the game seems to have been confined to the Japanese court, but over the next century or two it spread among the upper classes generally. The literary works of the period, such as the Tale of Genji, which dates from the early eleventh century, frequently mention go, and from these references it is clear that the game had already gained an avid, if limited, following.

The game as played in those days differed in several ways from modern go. Go was originally played on a 17x17 board, although this was replaced by the 19x19 board very early on. The Japanese also adopted the Chinese practice of starting every game with a mandatory cross-hoshi fuseki; that is, before starting to play, each player occupied a pair of diagonally opposite 4-4 points. Furthermore, it seems that White played first in those days.

Since games were never recorded in the early mediaeval period, it is not possible to say how strong the top players of the day were, but a clue is provided by the story of a player called Osan who gained renown for his ability, after finishing a game, to replay it from memory. This suggests a fairly low level of achievement, since any modern professional as well as a great many strong amateurs can do this routinely these days.

As the mediaeval period continued the game spread from the aristocracy to the Buddhist and Shinto clergy and to the samurai warriors. Nichiren, who founded the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, is said to have been one of the best go players of his day (around 1250). He is also said to have introduced the practice of keeping game records; a record survives of a game between Nichiren and a nine year old disciple named Kisshomaru, dated the First Month of 1253. However, it should be noted that most people believe that this game record is a nineteenth century forgery, and barring this record there is little evidence that Nichiren played go at all (although there are several classic whole-board problems attributed to him).

Early game records, whether authentic or not, give a good idea of the way go was played in the old days. First, non-4-4 point joseki were only used in handicap games of 2 or 3 stones, where there were empty corners at the start of the game. In even games, due to the mandatory cross-hoshi opening, the only joseki seen were 4-4 joseki. The earliest of these is believed to date from the tenth century. However, the joseki current in those days have long ago been discarded.

Another feature of mediaeval go, probably the most striking to modern eyes, was its incredible aggressiveness. The modern ideas of fuseki development were far in the future, and games were marked by immediate savage fighting. If Black, say, approached one corner, White would invariably respond by approaching another; wide extensions were simply not made - if they had been, they would have been invaded straight away (the idea of building a moyo was totally alien and unheard-of); consequently, games involved large numbers of small groups jostling for eyes from start to finish. Under these circumstances, fighting ability was the only criterion for strength at go. No wonder the samurai considered go a good way to pass the time between battles!

Finally, sometime in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, the cross-hoshi fuseki was abandoned in favour of starting with an empty board as we do today. The cross-hoshi had been largely responsible for the old style of play, and abandoning it made the modern style of go possible, although it took a long time for the old super-aggressive style to die out. This reform, which the Chinese did not adopt until the 1920's, is the first reason why Japanese go developed to a higher level than in China, and was undoubtedly the most significant advance in the development of go since the establishment of the 19x19 board.

Sadly, the Japanese did not adopt another reform that was taking place in China at about this time. The Japanese system of counting, in which only vacant points count as territory, was originally used in China as well; but the Chinese had become aware of its defects and gradually abandoned it in favour of counting both occupied and surrounded points as territory. Had the Japanese done likewise, we would not now have the annoyance of two competing sets of rules (not to mention the numerous hybrids that have been devised), and the position of go world-wide might well be stronger.

CHAPTER 2. Sansa

  After the cross-hoshi was abandoned, the 4-4 point fell out of use in non-handicap games, probably because it could not support a shimari. By the mid-sixteenth century, the 3-4, 3-5 and 4-5 points had become by far the commonest openings. The 3-3 point was considered far too small. The kind of large-scale thinking required to appreciate the merits of the 3-3 and 4-4 points is a modern development. Nobody in the sixteenth century thought in terms of large frameworks.

At this time, Japan was beginning to emerge from a long period of civil war. The samurai warlord Oda Nobunaga, who began the process of reunifying the country, was a strong and enthusiastic go player, and he decided to seek out the strongest player in Japan in order to become his pupil. It happened that the strongest player of the time was a Buddhist monk of the Nichiren sect named Nikkai, who lived in a pagoda called Hon'inbo in the Jakkoji temple in Kyoto.

Nobunaga must have been annoyed to discover this, for he despised the Nichiren sect, but there was no doubt that Nikkai was the strongest player in Japan, so in 1578, during a visit to Kyoto, Nobunaga sent for him and was very impressed despite himself. Nobunaga was by no means a weak player by the standards of the time, but Nikkai was still able to give him five stones handicap. (On the evidence of his surviving games, Nikkai was about as strong as a 5 dan amateur today.) It was Nobunaga who first referred to Nikkai as the Meijin, which means "expert" or "great man" and which later came to be applied to the strongest player of the day as a title.

In 1582 Nikkai was summoned to the Honnoji temple in Kyoto to play a game against his main rival, Kashio Rigen, in Nobunaga's presence. A triple ko is said to have arisen in this game, requiring the game to be abandoned. A game record survives, but shows only 128 moves, by which time White was far ahead and it is hard to see how a triple ko could arise. (Early game records often end as soon as one player has opened up a significant lead - only if a game was close throughout will the whole game be recorded.)

This game is one of the most famous in go history because of what happened next. The reunification of Japan was still far from complete, and heavy fighting was taking place in the western provinces, where Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of Nobunaga's subordinate generals, was making steady but slow progress. On the night of the triple ko game Nobunaga ordered another subordinate general, Akechi Mitsuhide, to march west to relieve Hideyoshi. Akechi seems to have harboured a secret grudge against Nobunaga, for upon reaching the Katsura River, just west of Kyoto, he turned his troops around, shouting "The enemy is in the Honnoji!", and marched them back, capturing the temple and forcing Nobunaga to commit suicide. Because of this, a triple ko was thereafter regarded as an unlucky omen - not unlucky for the players, just generally inauspicious.

Nobunaga's work was continued by Hideyoshi, who, on hearing of Nobunaga's death, concluded a hasty peace treaty in the west, rushed back to Kyoto and promptly defeated and killed Akechi. Like Nobunaga, Hideyoshi was a strong go player, and Nikkai became his teacher.

In 1588 Hideyoshi ordered all the top players of the day to take part in a tournament to determine their relative strengths. Nikkai won this tournament, as expected, and received an annual salary from Hideyoshi as his prize. Hideyoshi also decreed that all other players should henceforth take black (or a handicap) from Nikkai. At about this time Nikkai changed his name to Sansa, and adopted the surname Hon'inbo after the pagoda where he lived. It is as Hon'inbo Sansa that he is best known today.

CHAPTER 3. The Go Schools

 The process of reunifying Japan was finally completed in 1600 by Tokugawa Ieyasu, who became shogun (the de facto ruler of Japan) three years later. Like his predecessors, Ieyasu was a keen go player, and he took a number of steps to ensure the future development of the game.

The first of these measures was the establishment of the post of godokoro. This was a salaried government appointment - Sansa was the first holder of the post. The godokoro was responsible for all go matters - he alone could issue promotions, for example. He was the shogun's go teacher, and as such was expected to give up competitive go - indeed, he could (in theory) only play go with the shogun's permission. The post had immense prestige value and its holder's influence spread well beyond the go world, since he had the shogun's ear. Only the current Meijin could be appointed godokoro, although the appointment was not automatic. Sansa became godokoro in 1603 - in fact he also gained the equivalent post in the shogi (Japanese chess) world, that of shogidokoro, since he was the top shogi player of the day also. However, he soon resigned the shogi post and concentrated on go.

The title of Meijin needs some clarification here. As has been mentioned, the word meijin means "expert" and originally had no particular significance, but under the newly devised system of grades, Meijin became the top grade. This, however, should not be equated with the modern professional 9 dan grade, since only one person could be Meijin at a time. This meant that to become Meijin one had to be generally recognised as the strongest player in Japan. During most of the Edo period (1600-1868) there was no Meijin, and consequently no godokoro, because the top players were too closely matched for any one player to be considered pre-eminent.

At this period, dan grades had not yet been devised. Instead, players were ranked according to the handicap they had to take from a player with the rank of jozu. Jozu, which was later equated to 7 dan, was the top rank that a player could normally aspire to. Although there were two ranks above jozu, namely jun-Meijin (near-Meijin) and Meijin, promotions to these ranks only occurred in exceptional circumstances. A lesser player's rank would be expressed as, for example, "two stones against jozu". The word jozu means "skilful".

The second measure taken by Ieyasu to promote go was the establishment, in about 1605, of the o-shiro-go (Castle Go). These were official games between the top players, played in the shogun's presence. At first these were played at irregular intervals, and at no fixed venue, but in 1628 they were moved to Edo Castle and became an annual event (though the exact date - the seventeenth of the Eleventh Month - was not fixed until 1716). The castle games were the highlight of the go calendar - only the heads of the go schools (see below) and players ranked as jozu or jun-Meijin were allowed to take part, although this rule was not always strictly enforced. The Meijin never took part, since, as has been said, he was considered above competition.

But of all the changes in Japanese go at this time the most far-reaching was the establishment of the four go schools. These are considered to have all been founded in 1612, when all the top players (jozu or stronger) were awarded annual salaries for the first time (previously only Sansa had received government money). Actually, it was probably several years before all four schools were up and running.

Sansa founded the most prestigious and most lavishly supported school, which he named Hon'inbo. Two of his pupils, Nakamura Doseki and Yasui Rokuzo (who later changed his name to Santetsu), founded the Inoue and Yasui schools respectively. (Not everyone regards Doseki as the founder of the Inoue school as he never took the name Inoue - some prefer to call his successor, Inoue Genkaku Inseki, the first of the line. In this history I take the majority view and count Doseki as the first Inoue.) The fourth school, the Hayashi, was founded by Hayashi Monnyusai, a pupil of Sansa's old rival Kashio Rigen. The Hayashi school, incidentally, owed its name to Monnyusai's humility; he had been a retainer of the shogun, Ieyasu, who gave him the right to take a surname and suggested Mori (forest). Monnyusai considered this too exalted and settled for Hayashi (wood).

All four schools set up shop in Edo (modern Tokyo) and the next 250 years of Japanese go history is the story of how these schools competed fiercely for supremacy, usually over the go board, but often by unashamed political skulduggery. The Hon'inbo school was by far the most successful of the four, although it did have its bad times, particularly the early eighteenth century. However, the Hon'inbo record speaks for itself - of the ten players who became Meijin before it became the name of the modern annual tournament, no less than seven were Hon'inbos (the other three were two Inoues - both of them with strong Hon'inbo school links - and a Yasui. See APPENDIX A).

CHAPTER 4. San'etsu and Sanchi

 By 1623, when Sansa died, the strongest player in Japan was his one-time pupil Nakamura Doseki, usually considered the founder of the Inoue school. Sansa had accordingly arranged for Doseki to be promoted to Meijin and appointed godokoro, effective upon Sansa's death. In return for this favour, Doseki agreed to complete the training of Sansa's twelve-year-old heir San'etsu.

It should be explained here that although San'etsu was Sansa's heir, he was only Sansa's son by adoption - indeed, the Hon'inbos (and the Inoues) maintained the tradition of the head of the school being a Buddhist priest of the Nichiren sect, bound by a vow of celibacy. Actually, this rule was never enforced very strictly, and many Hon'inbos and Inoues maintained mistresses, even wives, and had children. The Yasui and Hayashi heads belonged to the Jodo sect and were not bound by any such vows. The Yasui headship in particular was quite often passed to a son or other blood relative of the previous head.

To maintain the succession, the go schools had all adopted the iemoto system, whereby the head of the school adopted his best pupil as his son and bequeathed the headship to this pupil upon his death or retirement. The names Hon'inbo, Inoue, Yasui and Hayashi functioned as surnames, and were therefore taken by the pupil as soon as he was adopted as heir. The other pupils would keep their original surnames, but all the stronger pupils, including the heir, would adopt new given names. In the case of the star pupils, the head of the school would usually donate a character from his own given name, which explains the similarity of names from one generation to the next; Sansa, San'etsu, Doetsu, Dosaku, Dochi etc. (see APPENDIX B for a list of the go school heads).

As the Hon'inbo heir by adoption, San'etsu changed his original surname of Sugimura to Hon'inbo, but despite taking the name he was not allowed to succeed to the Hon'inbo headship when Sansa died, since he was considered too young, and not strong enough. Consequently, the Hon'inbo school was without a head for seven years, the longest such interval in the history of the go schools.

Doseki fulfilled his part of the bargain with Sansa, and under his tutelage San'etsu rapidly improved. In 1630 he was promoted to jozu and was finally allowed to become the second Hon'inbo. In the same year Doseki died and the office of godokoro fell vacant for the first time.

The post of godokoro was destined to be vacant more often than it was filled, for only a truly great player could hope to receive the appointment. When there was no godokoro, promotions had to be decided by agreement between the four go school heads. This was bound eventually to lead to an impasse if two of the go heads both wanted promotion to Meijin, and this became a recurring theme in Edo period go history.

The first such impasse took place in 1644 between Hon'inbo San'etsu and Yasui Sanchi, who had just become the second Yasui head. Since neither could get the other to back down, they appealed directly to the government to resolve the issue. The authorities told San'etsu and Sanchi to play a sogo, with the coveted promotion to Meijin as the prize. The Japanese word sogo literally means "fighting go", but perhaps a better translation would be "grudge match" - a match intended to settle some point at issue between the players (see APPENDIX C). The sogo was to consist of six games. There had to be an even number of games to enable both players to take black an equal number of times - there was no komi in those days.

The match was played at an extremely leisurely pace - the first game was in 1645 and the last in 1653 - but it decided nothing, since Black won every game, resulting in a 3-3 draw. Consequently the government rejected both players' claims.

In 1658, San'etsu died, and was succeeded by his heir Doetsu. Sanchi's hopes of promotion were revived. In the meantime, however, the administrative side of go was being reorganised.

CHAPTER 5. Sanchi and Doetsu

In 1662, go and shogi were placed under the jurisdiction of a government official known as the jisha-bugyo. This translates as "commissioner for monasteries and shrines" and the post was held on a rotating basis by three (sometimes four) officials serving a month at a time. As the name suggests, the commissioners were primarily concerned with religious matters, and placing go under their control might seem rather bizarre, but this was presumably because of the go schools' Buddhist links.

The jisha-bugyo was empowered to act for the government in resolving future disputes such as that between San'etsu and Sanchi, although the commissioners did not administer go matters directly, this remaining the business of the go heads, or of the godokoro if there was one.

In 1668 Sanchi decided to try again for promotion to Meijin godokoro, but this time he bypassed his rivals in the other go schools and applied directly to the jisha-bugyo. At the same time he is said to have asked friends in high places to put pressure on the commissioner to issue the promotion, and consequently it was approved without consultation with the other go heads and Sanchi became the third Meijin godokoro of the Edo period.

Needless to say, the other go heads were annoyed by Sanchi's deviousness, none more so than San'etsu's successor, Hon'inbo Doetsu, who felt that Sanchi had bought the promotion he had been unable to earn against San'etsu. Doetsu lodged an instant objection with the jisha-bugyo and demanded a sogo with Sanchi. This was a risky thing to do, since Sanchi's appointment was in theory an act of the shogun, so Doetsu was in effect criticising his superiors. It is said that the jisha-bugyo tried to scare Doetsu by allowing the match but ordering that he be exiled to a distant island for life if he lost. Doetsu is said to have replied that not even the threat of execution would put him off.

Perhaps remembering the slow pace and inconclusive result of Sanchi's previous match, the jisha-bugyo ordered that this match should consist of sixty games and be played at the rate of twenty games a year. Doetsu would play on the handicap of josen (taking black in every game) since he was only jozu, whereas Sanchi was, of course, Meijin, but this handicap would be revised if either player achieved a lead of six games or won four games in succession.

The first game was played in 1668 and resulted in a jigo. It was rumoured at the time that this had been arranged beforehand at Sanchi's request. Whether this was true or not, it set a bizarre precedent - it became the custom in future sogo matches for the first game to be a prearranged jigo.

The match progressed at a much slower pace than had been ordered; by 1675 only twenty games had been played. After the sixteenth game Doetsu was 9-3 up with four jigo, so the handicap was revised to sen'aisen - henceforth Doetsu would take white in every third game. It made little difference, since D...