I suppose I'm biased. I love go. But I don't think that's a prerequisite to enjoying this book. Even if you've never played a single stone, Kawabata's story is archetypal, the aging master against the young challenger. Within the documentary-like framework of the story of the master's final match, Kawabata explores a number of themes (the modern world's encroachment on tradition; the devotion, or obsession, that drives greatness; and the end of life among them) are explored with a language as subtle and graceful as the game of go itself. A beautiful achievement. ( )

This is a gorgeous book. Beware though, the book is character-driven and based on the game of Go. The book includes diagrams of gameboards and the movements of stones (the black and white game pieces). You can either learn the rules of Go online (they're very simple) or just read the book for the beautiful story that it is. The action is of the Master (the elderly and sickly Japanese Go champion) and his younger opponent during the Master's last game. The narrator is a newspaper reporter who is sent to cover the game. The action (moves take hours!) of the book belies the great beauty its writing. ( )

kawabata said this was his best work. i would agree if i knew how to play go. one should read up on (or learn how to play) it before reading the book. it's basically a play-by-play of the famous match with annotations. it's really quite beautiful. ( )

“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 meditation. It did not teach me how to play Go. I knew and still know nothing about the game of Go other than it is played with black and white stones on a board with a 19 x 19 grid. What this book taught me was how a reverent dedication to an art can lead to a deeper understanding of self.

The book is based on an actual Go tournament held in 1938 between a retiring master player (Honinbo Shūsai) and a younger up-and-coming player (Minoru Kitani). The game was played over a course of nearly 6 months. Kawabata, employed by the sponsoring newspaper to report on the match, adapted his serialization into this chronicle-novel.

It is about the struggle and differences between differing playing styles, an aging player losing his power and a younger more aggressive player. It is also about old traditions and new pragmatism.

There was something very calming about this book. This could be in part because as I was reading The Master of Go I was staying in the same inn that Kawabata stayed in during the beginning sessions of the match.

This from the Fukuzumi-ro Inn:

The Nobel Prize winning author, Kawabata Yasunari, loved this room in which you hear no sounds of the stream. He slept in daytime, worked in nighttime, and had a bowl of rice with tea every midnight, and next morning, people from magazine house or newspaper offices collected the manuscripts between the sliding doors. He had a look that could kill me in his eyes, but I knew he was a gentle man. ( )

When the old meets the new, someone loses and maybe someone dies.

The old Go master (Go is a game, invented in China, and played in Japan, Korea and China much like Chess in the West) meets the young upstart who hopes to unthrone him. Of course the context for this is Imperial Japan, as it enters into the modern age. The fictional match takes place in 1940, although the real match this book is based upon took place in 1936.

The language is delicate, as are the characters. It helps to know something about Go to understand parts of the book, but you can find enough on Wikipedia to get by.

This did make me buy some books on Go strategy. ( )