Wu of the Sixth Rank was in a sanitarium at Fujimi, to the west of Mt. Fuji. After each of the Hakoné sessions, Sunada of the Nichinichi would go to Fujimi for his comments. I would insert them appropriately into my report. The Nichinichi had chosen him because he and Otaké were the reliables among younger players, strong competitors in skill and in popularity.
He had over-exerted himself at Go and fallen ill. And the war with China grieved him deeply. He had once described in an essay how he longed for an early peace and the day when Chinese and Japanese men of taste might go boating together on beautiful Lake T’ai. During his illness at Fujimi he studied such works as The Book of History, Mirror of the Immortals, and Collected Works of Lu Tsu.32 He had become a naturalized Japanese citizen, taking Kuré Izumi as his Japanese name.
Although the schools were out when I returned from Hakoné to Karuizawa, that international summer resort was crowded with students. There was gunfire. Troops of student reserves were in training. More than a score of acquaintances in the literary world had gone off with the army and navy to observe the attack on Hankow. I was not selected for the party. Left behind, I wrote in my Nichinichi reports of how popular Go had always been in time of war, of how frequently one heard stories of games in battle encampments, of how closely the Way of the Warrior resembled a way of art, there being an element of the religious in both.
Sunada came to Karuizawa on August 18 and we took a train on the Komi line from Komoro. One of the passengers reported that in the heights around Mt. Yatsugataké great numbers of centipede-like insects came out in the night to cool themselves, in such numbers that the train wheels spun as if the tracks had been greased. We spent the night at the Saginoyu hot spring in Kamisuwa and went on the next morning to Fujimi.
Wu’s room was above the entranceway. In one corner were two tatami mats. He illustrated his remarks with small stones on a small wooden board which he had laid out upon a small cushion and a collapsible wooden stand.
It was in 1932 at the Dankōen in Itō that Naoki Sanjugo and I watched Wu play the Master at a two-stone handicap. Those six years before, in a short-sleeved kimono of dark blue speckled with white, his fingers long and slender, the skin fresh at the nape of his neck, he had made one think of an elegant and sensitive young girl. Now he had taken on the manner of the cultivated young monk. The shape of the head and ears and indeed of every feature suggested aristocracy, and few men can have given more clearly an impression of genius.
His comments came freely, though occasionally he would stop, chin in hand, and think for a time. The chestnut leaves glistened in the rain. How in general would he characterize the game, I asked.
“A very delicate game. It is going to be very close.”
It had been recessed in its early middle stages, and the Master himself was a contestant; and it was not for a rival player to predict the outcome. Yet what I wanted were comments upon the manner of play, given a sense of mood and style—an appraisal of the game as a work of art.
“It is splendid,” he replied. “In a word, it is an important game for both of them, and they both are playing carefully. They are giving a great deal of thought to every move. I can’t see a single mistake or oversight on the part of either. You aren’t often treated to such a game. I think it’s splendid.”
“Oh?” I was somewhat dissatisfied. “Even I can see that Black is playing a tight game. Is White too?”
“Yes, the Master is playing very carefully, very tightly. When one side plays a tight game the other must too, or he will find his positions crumbling. They have plenty of time, and it’s a very important game.”
It was a bland, harmless appraisal, and the appraisal I had hoped for was not forthcoming. Perhaps it had been bold of him even to describe the game as a close one.
But since I was in a state of great excitement over a game I had studied intently through all its early phases, I had hoped for something more profound, something touching on the spiritual.
Saitō Ryūtarō of the magazine Bungei Shunjū was convalescing at a near-by inn. We stopped to see him. He had until recently been in the room next to Wu’s.
“Sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep I would hear stones clicking. It was a little hair-raising, actually.” And he remarked upon the extraordinary dignity with which Wu saw visitors to the door.
Shortly after the Master’s retirement match, I was invited with Wu to Shimogamo Springs in South Izu, and I learned about dreams of Go. Sometimes, I was told, a player discovers a brilliant play in his sleep. Sometimes he remembers a part of the configuration after he awakens.
“I often have a feeling when I’m at the board that I have seen a game before, and I wonder if it might have been in a dream.”
His most frequent adversary in dreams, said Wu, was Otaké of the Seventh Rank.