The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata

Go is a strategic game in which two players must place their stones on a Go board in such a way that they surround the enemy stones, and eliminate them.

Cast of characters:

The reporter: he tells this true story and writes for a newspaper named Nichinichi Shimbun.

 

The Master of Go: the master of Go. Respected by all other players in spite of his low health.

 

Otaké: The Master of Go’s final opponent, and a player of the seventh rank.

 

The story begins in the 1930s and ends in 1940, when the master dies. It is not in chronological order because of the fact that the story begins when the match ends, goes to the master’s death, then ‘resumes’ to the beginning of the match, only then gradually advancing to the end. I was told by ‘Dizzy’ that the story actually is only 6 months long; I’m not sure, but i think it is very likely. I will only give a 5/10 star rating for this book because it completely lacked in action: I’m not the kind of person to like this book. And so the book was ‘boring’: an average verse would look something like this:

 

“Fierce”, said Otaké, wiping his forehead and hair with a small towel. “And Go is fierce too.”

            “Up to Hokoné we’ve come, we’ve come, the steepest of them all…”

With time out for lunch, Otaké took three hours and thirty five minutes to play black59.