Author: Yasunari Kawabata

Title: The Master of Go

Format: Paperback

Pages: 189

Series: –

Hi everyone, apologies for the sudden radio silence of the last few weeks. I’m preparing for an exam and cloud characteristics are taking all of my computing power, as well as all of my available time 😉 This situation should be remedied in the next couple of weeks, when I hopefully sit and pass the exam. But till then, I’ll be scarce in the blogosphere, not posting much or visiting much. I’m alive, though, and kicking – just in a different direction ;).

Now, then, onto today’s real topic – Kawabata’s intriguing mix of fact and fiction, a reportage turned into a meditation on cultural change turned into a dirge for the past. I’ll be usin my GR review as the foundation, and I’ll be adding a thought here and there, to explain my admittedly short and slightly whimsical initial impression.

The crux: Interesting, unusual, meditative.

It’s such a strange little book, showcasing the uniqueness of Japanese culture in rare and hard-hitting ways. First of all, the game of go means nothing to most of the Western sphere and is much less known than, say, another of Asian war games turned philosophical mirror, a.k.a chess. Go is said to be much more complex and difficult than chess, depicting a perspective on life, a way of approaching things, that is not common in the Western culture. It is – or at least it used to be – not a game in the Western meaning: not an entertaining pastime but rahter a battle of wills, a bloodless duel that nevertheless remains deadly serious. Kawabata depicts a particular game of go, when these old tradition and beliefs give way before the modern, somewhat Westernized and rationalized approach: a clash between the old master and the young contender. The emotions in this go match cover almost the entire range, from cold calculation to hot-headed anger, from triumph to quiet despair. The one emotion missing from this mix is joy. Quiet satisfaction, yes. But clean joy, mirth, is something that doesn’t enter this gravely serious clash of personalities and traditions. This final match of the ‘invincible Master,’ highly publicized and extremely popular, in which every move is widely commented in minuscule detail, is in fact a background, or a metaphor, for the profound cultural conflict playing out in Japan itself.

“Shusai the Master would seem, in a variety of meanings, to have stood at the boundary between the old and the new. He had at the same time the lofty position of the old master and the material benefits of the new. In a day the spirit of which was a mixture of idolatry and iconoclasm, the Master went into his last match as the last survivor among idols of old.”

There is a lot of sadness in this book, a quiet grieving over the inevitable change and the destruction it brings; and yet, the sadness is ameliorated by the appreciation of the new way, by a slow and dignified acceptance of the inevitability. There is also a lot of pride in the traditions, an unbending, straight-backed adherence to old ways and their meaning, to concepts like honor, dignity, and propriety. The lens of the narrator is turned outward; the emotions he feels are reactions to the impulses coming from the outside world: the nature, others around him. The way Kawabata achieves the emotional weight of his novel/reportage is highly intriguing, dependent as much on the natural passage of time evidenced in the changing of seasons and weather patterns as on the actions of the protagonists. It probably needs to be mentioned that Kawabata ultimately committed suicide; some reviewers trace the underlying causes of his decision to his views expressed in here, to the grief over the death of the proud, mystical Japan of old. I will leave this discussion for others, but I need to mention that there is a clear feeling of loss, an underlying sadness permeating every page of this slim book. For a reportage, this work speaks surpassingly more about the author than about the nominal object of his attention.

Indeed, you won’t learn how to play go from this book; but you might come out reacher in understanding of the Japanese culture and perspectives. To that end, let me offer you one last quote, from the match of the narrator and an American met on a train, who enthusiastically insisted on playing:

“He had the forms down well enough, but he had a way of playing thoughtlessly, without really putting himself into the game. Losing did not seem to bother him in the least. He went happily through game after game, as if to say that it was silly to take a mere game seriously. He lined his forces up after patterns he had been taught, and his opening plays were excellent; but he had no will to fight. If I pushed him back a little or made a surprise move, he quietly collapsed. It was as if I were throwing a large but badly balanced opponent in a wrestling match. Indeed this quickness to lose left me wondering uncomfortably if I might not have something innately evil concealed within me.”

There is a lot to think about after reading this seemingly innocuous book. It’s fascinating how culture shapes our perceptions, how it informs our reality. As I mentioned before, this book had been originally partly written as a series of dispatches from a real match of go, for the Japanese readers already well versed in the art of go. There is not much explanation, and while the board snapshots are added, they do not inform as much as add to the mystery. This aspect of being thrown in the middle of it all makes this reading experience at once more alien and more intriguing, and recommended for all interested in Japan.

Score: 7/10