The two large moles were on the right cheek, and the right eyebrow was extraordinarily long. The far end drew an arc over the eyelid, and reached even to the line of the closed eye. Why should the camera have made it seem so long? The eyebrow and the two moles seemed to add a gently pleasing melancholy to the dead face.

The long eyebrow brought twinges of sorrow. This was the reason.

When my wife and I visited the Urokoya on January 16, two days before the Master’s death, his wife said: “Yes. We were going to mention it as soon as these good people came. Do you remember? We were going to mention your eyebrow.” She cast a prompting glance at the Master, then turned to us. “I am sure it was on the twelfth. Rather a warm day, I believe. We thought it would be right for the trip to Atami if he were to have a good shave, and so we called a barber we’ve known for years. My husband went out into the sunlight on the veranda for his shave. He seemed to remember something. He said to the barber that he had one very long hair in his left eyebrow. It was a sign of long life, he said, and the barber was not to touch it. The barber stopped work and said yes, there it was, this one right here. A hair of good luck, a sign of long life. He would indeed be careful. My husband turned to me and said that Mr. Uragami had written about the hair in his newspaper articles. Mr. Uragami had a remarkable eye for details, he said. He had not noticed it himself until he read about it in the paper. He was overcome with admiration.”

Though the Master was silent as always, a flicker crossed his face as if it had caught the shadow of a passing bird. I was uncomfortable.

But I did not dream that the Master would be dead two days after the story of the mark of longevity he had asked the barber to spare.

It was a trifling matter, that I should have noticed the hair and written about it; but I had noticed it at a difficult moment, and it had come as a sort of rescue. I had written thus of the day’s session at Hakoné:⁵

The Master’s wife is staying at the inn, ministering to her aged husband. Mrs. Otaké, mother of three children, the oldest of them six, commutes between Hiratsuka and Hakoné. The strain on the two wives is painfully apparent to the onlooker. On August 10, for instance, during the play at Hakoné, when the Master was desperately ill, the faces of the two women seemed drained of blood, their expressions were tense and drawn.

The Master’s wife had not been at the Master’s side during play; but today she sat gazing intently from the next room. She was not watching the play. She was watching the ailing player, and she did not take her eyes from him all through the session.

Mrs. Otaké has never come into the room during play. Today she was in the hall, now standing still, now walking up and down. Finally, the suspense too much for her, it seemed, she went into the managers’ office.

“Otaké is still thinking about his next play?”

“Yes. It’s a difficult moment.”

“It’s never easy to concentrate, but it would be easier if he had slept last night.”

Otaké had worried the whole night through about whether to continue the game with the ailing Master. He had not slept at all, and had come sleepless to the session that morning. It was Black’s turn at half past twelve, the hour specified for breaking off the session, and after almost an hour and a half Otaké still had not decided upon his sealed play. There was no question of lunch. Mrs. Otaké of course found it difficult to sit quietly in her room. She too had passed a sleepless night.

The only one who slept was Mr. Otaké, Junior. He is a splendid young man now in his eighth month, so splendid that if someone were to inquire of me about the nature and the spirit of Mr. Otaké, Senior, I would want to show him the child, a veritable embodiment of that spirit. It has been one of those days when a person finds it impossible to face an adult, and for me this little Momotaro has been a savior.

Today I discovered for the first time a white hair about an inch long in the Master’s eyebrow. Standing out from the swollen-eyed, heavy-veined face, it too somehow came as a savior.

From the veranda outside the players’ room, which was ruled by a sort of diabolic tension, I glanced out into the garden, beaten down by the powerful summer sun, and saw a girl of the modern sort insouciantly feeding the carp. I felt as if I were looking at some freak. I could scarcely believe that we belonged to the same world.

The faces of both the Master’s wife and Mrs. Otaké were drawn and pale and wasted. As always, the Master’s wife left the room when play began, but almost immediately she was back again, and she sat gazing at the Master from the next room. Onoda of the Sixth Rank was there too, his eyes closed and his head bowed. The face of the writer Muramatsu Shofu, who had been among the observers, wore a pitying expression. Even the talkative Otaké was silent. He seemed unable to look up at the Master’s face.

The sealed play, White 90, was opened. Inclining his head to the left and to the right, the Master played White 92, cutting the diagonal black stones. White 94 was played after a long period of meditation, an hour and nine minutes. Now closing his eyes, now looking aside, occasionally bowing as if to control a spell of nausea, the Master seemed in great distress. His figure was without the usual grandeur. Perhaps because I was watching against the light, the outlines of his face seemed blurred, ghostlike. The room was quiet, but with a different quietness. The stones striking the board—Black 95, White 96, Black 97—had an unearthly quality about them, as of echoing in a chasm.

The Master deliberated for more than half an hour before playing White 98. His eyes blinking, his mouth slightly open, he fanned himself as if fanning up the embers in the deepest reaches of his being. Was such grim concentration necessary, I wondered.

Yasunaga of the Fourth Rank came in. Just inside the room, he knelt down to make his formal greetings. His bow was solemnly respectful and diffident. Neither contestant noticed. Each time one or the other seemed about to look his way, Yasunaga repeated the bow. There was nothing else for him to do. Demonic forces seemed lost in horrid battle.

Immediately after White 98 the youth who was keeping records announced that a minute of play remained. Then it was twelve thirty, time for the sealed play.

“If you are tired, sir,” said Onoda to the Master, “suppose you leave.”

“Yes, do, please, sir, if you feel like it,” said Otaké, back from the lavatory. “I’ll think for a while by myself here, and seal my play. I promise not to ask for advice.” For the first time there was laughter.

They spoke out of concern for the Master, whom it seemed inhuman to keep longer at the board. There was no real need for him to be there, since Otaké’s Black 99 would be a sealed play. His head cocked to one side, the Master deliberated whether to stay or to go.

“I’ll stay just a little longer.” But immediately he went to the lavatory, and then he was joking with Muramatsu Shofu in the anteroom. He was surprisingly lively when away from the board.

Left to himself, Otaké gazed at the White pattern in the lower left corner as if he wanted to sink his fangs into it. An hour and thirteen minutes later, at well past one, he made his sealed play, Black 99, a “peep”⁶ at the dead center of the board.

In the morning the managers had gone to ask the Master whether he wanted to play in an outbuilding or on the second floor of the main building.

“I can’t walk any more,” was his answer, “and I’d prefer the main building. But Mr. Otaké said the waterfall bothered him. Suppose you ask him. I’ll do as he wishes.”