The second session at the Kōyōkan was to have begun at ten. Because of a misunderstanding it was delayed until two. I was an onlooker, outside it all; but the consternation of the managers was quite apparent. Virtually the whole of the Association had rushed to the scene, I gathered, and was meeting in another room.

I had arrived just as Otaké was arriving, a large suitcase in his hand.

“Why the luggage?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, in the abrupt manner that was his before a session. “We leave for Hakoné today. To be sealed in for the rest of the match.”

I had been told that the contestants would go directly from the Kōyōkan to a Hakoné inn. Yet the proportions of Otaké’s baggage rather startled me.

The Master had made no arrangements for the move.

“Oh was that the idea?” he said. “In that case I should call a barber.”

This was a bit deflating for Otaké, who had come all prepared to be away from home till the end of the match, in perhaps three months’ time. And the Master was in violation of contract. Otaké’s annoyance was not soothed by the fact that no one seemed quite sure how clearly the terms had been communicated to the Master. They should have been solemn and inviolable, and that they were broken so soon naturally left Otaké uneasy about the later course of the match. The managers had erred in not explaining them to the Master and explaining them again. No one was prepared to challenge him, however. He was in a class apart, and so the obvious solution was to cajole the young Otaké into continuing play at the Kōyōkan. Otaké proved rather stubborn.

If the Master did not know of the move to Hakoné today, well, that was that. There was a gathering in another room, there were nervous footsteps in the corridors, Otaké disappeared for a long interval. Having nothing better to do, I waited beside the Go board. Soon after what would ordinarily have been lunch time, a compromise was reached: today’s session would be from two to four, and with two days’ rest the party would go to Hakoné.

“We can’t really get started in two hours,” said the Master. “Let’s wait till we get to Hakoné and have a decent session.’

It was a point, but he could not be allowed to have his way. Just such remarks had been responsible for the discord that morning. The spirit of the game should have precluded arbitrary changes in the schedule. The game of Go tended to be controlled these days by inflexible rules. Elaborate conditions had been set for the Master’s last game, to keep his old-fashioned willfulness under control, to deny him a special status, to ensure complete equality.

The system of “sealing the players in cans” was operative and must be followed through to the end. It was proper that the players go directly from the Kōyōkan to Hakoné. The system meant that they might not leave the appointed site or, lest they receive advice, meet other players until the end of the game. It might be said therefore to guard the sanctity of the contest. It could as well be said to deny human dignity, and yet, in the balance, the integrity and probity of the players were no doubt served. In a match expected to last three months, the sessions to take place at five-day intervals, such precautions seemed doubly necessary. Whatever the wishes of the players themselves, the danger of outside interference was real, and once doubts arose there would be no end to them. The world of Go did of course have its conscience and its ethics, and the likelihood seemed small that there would be talk of a game lasting through multiple sessions, least of all to the players themselves; but again, once an exception was made there would be no end to exceptions.

In the last decade or so of the Master’s life he played only three title matches. In all three he fell ill midway through the match. He was bedridden after the first, and after the third he died. All three were eventually finished, but because of recesses the first took two months, the second four, and the third, announced as his last, nearly six months.

The second was held in 1930, five years before the last.¹¹ Wu of the Fifth Rank was the challenger. The two sides were in delicate balance as the match came into its middle stages, and at about White 150 the Master seemed in a shade the weaker position. Then, at White 160, he made a most extraordinary play, and his second victory was assured. It was rumored that the play was in fact conceived by Maeda of the Sixth Rank, one of the Master’s disciples. Even now the truth is in doubt. Maeda himself has denied the allegation. The game lasted four months, and no doubt the Master’s disciples studied it with great care. White 160 may indeed have been invented by one of them, and perhaps, since it was a remarkable invention, someone did pass it on to the Master. Perhaps, again, the play was the Master’s own. Only the Master and his disciples know the truth.

The first of the three matches, in 1926, was actually between the Association and a rival group, the Kiseisha, and the generals of the two forces, the Master and Karigané of the Seventh Rank, were in single combat; and there can be little doubt that during the two months it lasted the rival forces put a great deal of study into it. One cannot be sure all the same that they gave advice to their respective leaders. I rather doubt that they did. The Master was not one to ask advice, nor was he an easy man to approach with advice. The solemnity of his art was such as to reduce one to silence.

And even during this his last match there were rumors. Was the recess, ostensibly because of his illness, in fact a stratagem on his part? To me, watching the game through to the end, such allegations were impossible to believe.

It astonished the managers, and myself as well, that Otaké deliberated his first move at Itō, when the game was resumed after a three-month recess, for two hundred and eleven minutes—a full three hours and a half. He began his deliberations at ten thirty in the morning, and with a noon recess of an hour and a half, finally played when the autumn sun was sinking and an electric light hung over the board.

It was at twenty minutes before three that he finally played Black 101.

He looked up laughing. “See what an idiot I am. It shouldn’t have taken me a minute to make the jump. Three and a half hours deciding whether to jump or to swim.¹² Ridiculous.” And he laughed again.

The Master smiled wryly and did not answer.

It was as Otaké said: Black 101 was quite obvious to all of us. The game was entering its decisive stages and the time had come for Black to invade the White formation in the lower right corner; and the point where the play was finally made offered almost the only reasonable beginning. Besides the one-space “jump” to R-13, the “swim” at R-12 was a possibility; but though some hesitation was understandable the difference was of little account.

Why then did he take so long? Bored with the long wait, I at first thought it merely strange, and then I began to have suspicions. Was it all a show? Was it an irritant, or perhaps a camouflage? I had reasons for these uncharitable suspicions. Play was being resumed after a three-month recess. Had Otaké been studying the board all through those months? At the hundredth play the match was a tight, delicate one. The final stages might have a certain boldness and sweep, but the issue would probably remain in doubt to the end. However often and in whatever formation one lined up the stones there could be no real determination of the outcome. The research and the probing could go on indefinitely. Yet it seemed unlikely that Otaké had abandoned his studies of so important a match. He had had three months in which to think about Black 101. Now to take three and a half hours over the play: might he not be seeking to cover his activities during those three months? The organizers seemed to share my doubts and distaste.

In an interval when Otaké was out of the room, even the Master hinted at dissatisfaction. “He does take his time,” he muttered. However matters may have been in a practice match, the Master had never before been heard to say anything critical of an opponent during a title match.

But Yasunaga of the Fourth Rank, who was close to both the Master and Otaké, disagreed with me. “Neither of them seems to have done much of anything during the recess,” he said. “Otaké is a very fastidious person. He would not want to do anything while the Master was lying helpless in bed.”

Probably it was the truth. Probably in those three hours and a half Otaké was not only deliberating his play; he was bringing himself back to the board after a three-month absence, and doing his best to map out the finished game, through all the stages and formations it was likely to take.