The swan song of a master - 'Master of Go' by Yasunari Kawabata

MASTER of Go is one of the finest novels of Yasunari Kawabata, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. Kawabata, who committed suicide in 1972, is one of Japan's best-known authors in the international world of letters, where he is considered to be an heir to the Japanese literary tradition. In spite of his wide knowledge of Western literature and civilization and his great interest in modern thought, Kawabata was the spokesman of a certain idea of beauty which, he believed, was exclusive to traditional Japan. As a Master of the Japanese novel, he had much in common with the main character of the Master of Go.

The eponymous hero of the novel embodies an age that is over and a certain ethical position associated with it. True, his mastery only extends to Go, a game which is in some respects comparable to chess. But the story of how he is defeated for the only time in his career and dies shortly after is also a deeply-felt description of the decline of a generation invested with old traditions, and the death-throes of its values. The novel is imbued with a sense of natsukashisa--a word which means "nostalgia" and in Kawabata denotes an intense desire to return to a place or a person one has known and loved, who is lost for ever, and whom one will only meet again after death.

Master Shusai, the hero of the novel, was based on a real person, and Kawabata, who covered his final tournament for the daily newspaper which organized it, knew him at first hand. The tournament took place in 1938 and Shusai died early in 1940. Kawabata began to write his novel in 1942, but did not finish it until 1954. This slow gestation seems to have been a long exercise in mourning for a master who for Kawabata was irreplaceable.

A CONFRONTATION BETWEEN TWO GENERATIONS

The novel gives an account of Master Shusai's farewell tournament against Otake, a player of the Seventh Rank who is regarded as his potential successor. To win the right to challenge the Master, Otake has had to beat all the other candidates in a qualifying tournament. The stakes are high. Shusai has never been defeated and this is the last chance for a young player to pit his wits against him. For Shusai to retire undefeated would imply that the rising generation of players were no match for him and would feel inferior to him for ever.

The Master and his challenger seem to have nothing in common, starting with their attitude during the game. "Seated at the board, the Master and Otake presented a complete contrast, quiet against constant motion, nervelessness against nervous tension." Otake likes to joke while playing and often gets up to go to the toilet, whereas "Once he had sunk himself into a session, the Master did not leave the board". Physically, Otake weighs twice as much as the Master. His family life with his wife and their three children seems to be happy. He is surrounded by pupils. The Master, on the other hand, has no children and his favourite pupil, of whom he expected great things, is dead. He lives a solitary life shared only by his wife. This, then, is a face-to-face encounter between an old Master who has lost almost everything and is staking his reputation on this confrontation, and a happy young prodigy with his life before him.

But it is also a confrontation between two conceptions of the game. The Master has only played two tournaments in the previous dozen years, and in the intervening time much has changed. Now there is little scope for the players to express their individuality. The Master, like any other player, is required to obey strict rules which guarantee that the contest takes place in conditions of complete equality. The players are sealed in an inn during the several months of the tournament. Each one is allowed a strictly controlled time in which to make his moves. All these rules are new to the Master and put him at a disadvantage.

Throughout the tournament the Master tries to resist the constraints imposed on him. Otake, who is presented as a fair competitor, protests vigorously against the many ways in which the Master bends the rules, not so much deliberately as through inability to grasp the new spirit of the game. The Master plays like an artist. In his eyes a game is a work of art which the two players create together, each according to his own style and vision of the game, a fair encounter based on a moral commitment and mutual confidence, rather than on the strict application of a host of pettifogging rules which, as the narrator points out, merely encourage the players to find loopholes in them.

But this conception of the game has become outmoded, and when Otake makes a move that may seem unfair, the Master is put out of his stride. He thinks that the game has been "besmirched" and is no longer worth playing. This is a somewhat hasty judgement and one which he later reverses. Nevertheless, the Master seems to regard the game of Go as an aesthetic experience, whereas his adversary is primarily concerned with efficiency and plays to win.

Otake is just as interesting a character as the Master. He embodies the spirit of rationalism and modernity which is taking over contemporary Japan as well as the game of Go. He does not lack human qualities. Throughout the tournament he is shown to be profoundly respectful towards the Master, and at the end is grieved to defeat him. He is caught in a dilemma. On one hand he wants to be faithful to the new spirit of the game, which enforces equality between the players and strict observance of the rules, and is constantly disconcerted by what he regards as the Master's arbitrary demands. At the same time he is acutely embarrassed to be playing against an opponent whose failing health eventually brings to the tournament the atmosphere of a slow and cruel execution. Whatever reservations the narrator may feel about the spirit of modern rationalism represented by the rising generation of players, and in spite of his patent sympathy for the Master, he casts no aspersions on Otake's integrity, except for one brief moment of doubt which is immediately overcome.

Otake represents a new mentality, a new system. If he plays the role of executioner of the old Master, it is not by choice but because he is part of the evolution of Go. To remain popular, Go, like other traditional games, must adapt to social change and meet new demands such as those of the media. The old Master is not opposed to attention from the media, since he agrees to take part in a tournament sponsored by a leading newspaper. The firmness with which Otake opposes any laxity in the application of the rules seems less a reflection of his personality than part of the implacable law of modernity, which excludes all forms of favouritism, even--above all--those that may benefit the Master. The network of rules tightens around the old player with his outmoded ideas which are sacrificed on the altar of progress, a relentless process on which the very survival of the game in the modern world depends. From this point of view, Otake does no more than perform as conscientiously as possible his duty, which is to cross the threshold of a new era; to do this he must immolate the Master, the glorious representative of a past that must be rejected in favour of modernity.

'A STARVED URCHIN WITH AN APPETITE FOR GAMES'

Where does the Master stand in this ideological struggle between two generations, two visions of the world, two universes? Why do we respond to him as readers, and what makes his death at the end of the novel so poignant?

Even while he suffers, the Master is quite at home in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the tournament, the morbid and almost inhuman world of the game. He has no life outside the competition. Paradoxically, he is swallowed up by the game, to which he abandons himself totally. "Most professional Go players like other games as well, but the Master's addiction was rather special. He could not play an easy, nonchalant match, letting well enough alone. There was no end to his patience and endurance. He played day and night, his obsession somewhat disquieting. It was less as if he were playing to dispel gloom or beguile tedium than as if he were giving himself up to the fangs of gaming devils."

There is a kind of morbidity in this passion. On each shobu (victory or defeat) in which his reputation is staked, the Master stakes his life as a Go player, and this joust with death seems to bring him an enjoyment which is quite different from the anodyne pleasure that people usually look for in a game. In this sense, the connection made between the Master and death is by no means gratuitous: the Master is someone who enjoys dicing with death at every moment, even in a pursuit which for other people is only a diversion.

And yet in a way he is absent-minded. Questioned by the narrator about his amazing powers of endurance, he explains: "Maybe I have no nerves. A vague, absent sort--maybe the vagueness has been good for me." The word bonyari (which means "absent-minded" or "vague") is often used to describe the Master's behaviour, reactions or facial expression. Here, perhaps, we see the other side of his constant confrontation with death. At the other extreme to the mental effort deployed in a game whose strategy is governed with mathematical rigour, this "vagueness" which is so much a part of the Japanese aesthetic tradition is connected to the Master's remarkable capacity for concentration. Terms such as muga (absence from oneself) or boga (forgetfulness of self) are often used to describe the Master's total absorption in the game. His trance-like state illustrates an artistic side of Go, for the game fever that consumes him is one aspect of the joy of creation.

This tireless quest for enjoyment, in which the game becomes simultaneously more serious and more dangerous, also shows up another facet of the Master's character, a childishness which conflicts with his physical appearance. The doctor says that "He has a body like an undernourished child" and that his body only tolerates medicines in doses that "a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old might take". Like a child he rejects lukewarm pleasures and unreasonably seeks intense enjoyment in the frenzy of the game. "The Master was like a starved urchin in his appetite for games". He cultivates childishness rather than the wisdom that we might expect to find in an old master.

For the Master does not want to grow up, whereas Japan, society, and the game of Go itself, are forced to do so. The coming of maturity is an irresistible process which duly takes its toll in the form of the death of the childlike Master.

COPYRIGHT 1992 UNESCO
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group