The Master of Go
by Yasunari Kawabata
Yellow Jersey Press, HK$120
Yasunari Kawabata's naming of The Master of Go as his best work has enshrined it as the story to which readers turn to understand the Nobel laureate and the reshaping of the Japanese psyche after the second world war. The judges made no mention of the novel when Kawabata was awarded the Nobel in 1968. They cited Snow Country, generally considered his masterpiece, as well as Thousand Cranes and The Old Capital, also newly released in English. But before he committed suicide in 1972, Kawabata named The Master of Go his favourite, condemning scholars to dig for the author in the novel that is most isolated from the ideas and tone of his other work.
Which isn't to say Kawabata's affirmation has done much for the presence of The Master of Go in English. First translated in the year of his death - 20 years after its appearance in Japan - this is the only new edition in a decade. Edward G. Seidnesticker's spare 1972 translation has been repackaged with an introduction by Liza Dalby, author of the ground-breaking Geisha.
Although Master offers typical Kawabata impressions on the meeting of tradition with the new Japan, it turns away from the melancholy eroticism of his more recognised novels and denies the landscape any role in the story. Action is 'sealed in a tin can' during an indoor game of Go.
Thought to be the oldest board game, Go probably originated in Central Asia and was introduced to Japan by Chinese in the eighth century. For amateurs it's a simple territorial game in which a player using black markers battles an opponent's white markers to dominate the board's grid. Markers are removed when they're surrounded by the opponent's. Points are awarded for the number of lost markers and the size of the territory enclosed by markers.