Go Seigen vs. Kitani Minoru

Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru are two of the greatest go players of the 20th century. Both were great innovators in the game. Go Seigen (born in China) is considered one of the biggest geniuses in Go since the game's importation to Japan from China. Kitani Minoru, in addition to being a famous Go player himself, is also well known for his dojo, in which many great masters of go were taught as his students.

As Wikipedia states:

In 1933, along with his great friend Kitani Minoru, Go Seigen developed and popularized the shin fuseki ["new opening" theory] that broke away from the traditional opening patterns. It is for this very important contribution that Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru are recognized as the fathers of modern Go.

This happened during a series of matches between the two great players. The games of the match are described in detail in a very good book by John Fairbarn, Kamakura (named after the temple in which the match series happened). The author describes both the games themselves, with deep but accessible analysis, and the historical background surrounding each game. You can read the few excerpts from the book here.

An episode from the movie about Go Seigen, The Master of Go, that shows the first of the matches:

Tesuji Flash I

Does anyone have any ideas as to what's happening on the left side of the picture? (Click on the image to enlarge.) My guess is that a doctor is removing an arrow fragment from a samurai's arm, and the samurai is using Go as a distraction from pain.

It's also interesting that the samurai is playing White (one might imagine that his opponent was the court master of Go, whose job would be to entertain and teach the samurai; so, the master would take White, being a more skilled player; then again, maybe the opponent is simply another samurai), that they are sitting on chairs, not on the floor, and that they are playing on a table board, not on a traditional floor goban (I guess that ties in well with the chairs).

[Update: see below.]

Also note the samurai's beard. Actually, the guy in the middle also has a beard and looks a little like Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobson.

In any event, on to the main part of this post:

Tesuji (local move combinations) are my favorite aspect of Go games right now. Therefore, I present you with with the following Tesuji Flash from Go World magazine, No. 1, May–June 1977.



Update: Regarding the picture — it turns out, the main character of the picture is Chinese general Guan Yu. From Wikipedia's description of the picture:

A 19th-century Japanese woodcut of Guan Yu by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. In this scene he is being attended to by the physician Hua Tuo while playing Weiqi [Chinese name for Go].

 I guess that explains the table board and the chairs.

Single-convex go stones

Everyone knows the traditional Japanese bi-convex stones for Go:



Fewer people know that another, Chinese, variety of go stones exists — the single-convex stones (compare the one on the right with the rest):


(source)

A bit of information from one of the places one can buy these stones nowadays, Yellow Mountain Imports:

These stones are "single convex." One side is flat with a slight rounding on the edge, the other is fully rounded. Whether to play with single convex or double convex is a matter of personal taste. In general, Chinese Go players prefer these single convex stones for their feel and louder solid "snap" when played on the board.

One can hear this "snap" when viewing this game commentary made by a Chinese professional go player.

In addition to the aesthetic quality, the single-convex shape has three more uses: a) when analyzing game variations, one can put the discussed stones with their flat side up — this way it is easy to see the "side-variation" of the board position vs. the "main version" of the game; b) single-convex stones are less easily dislodged from their position if the board is bumped (or if one accidentally drops a stone from the above or touches stones with his sleeve); c) according to Chinese rules, one must count the stones placed on the board as a part of one's score — turning stones over marks them as already counted.

On the other hand, they are a considered to be a little more difficult to pick up from the board at the end of the game or when removing captured stones — but I have not found it difficult at all; you just need to apply a little leverage with your thumb (although it's true that you can't pick up two or three at a time as with the bi-convex stones). If you watch the video linked above, you'll see that the player picks up the stones quite easily.

Also, here, a boy picks up a large group of captured single-convex stones (at the same time demonstrating the "snap-back" tesuji):



The most famous material for making these stones is yunzi (although nowadays, bi-convex yunzi stones are also available):


(note the greenish glow around the black stone)

When buying single-convex stones, one must make sure he has the appropriate board for them. Only size 3 stones will fit the standard Japanese boards (where the spacing is slightly smaller than on the Chinese boards). Sizes 4 and 5 are for Chinese go boards only. Of course, one can get Chinese go board (or a full set), but some people prefer Japanese shin-kaya or kaya wooden boards to Chinese bamboo ones because of the Japanese boards' beautiful acoustic qualities.

Some more pictures of single-convex stones (source):





Stones from Russia:



(As you can see, Russian single-convex stones are more convex than the modern Chinese оr Japanese ones. I am not sure how easy they are to handle.)






Then again, if you're a fan of bi-convex stones, you can go nuts and get these:

Atomic bomb game

(the exhibit presents the position of the game at the moment the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima)

Interesting bit of Go history (source):

The number of go tournaments held in Japan during World War II were far fewer than those held before the war. Many young players were being drafted into military service and, because of a paper shortage, newspapers were compelled to reduce their size. Go columns were among the first to be dropped. In spite of this, newspapers continued to sponsor tournaments and games, even though they would probably never be published. 

As the war dragged on, conditions for staging even the most important games became extremely difficult. In the spring of 1945, Kaoru Iwamoto, 7-dan, earned the right to challenge Hashimoto Utaro for the third Honinbo title. However, finding a venue for the title match in bombed-out Tokyo had become impossible. 

A venue for the games was finally found in Hiroshima. However, the police chief of the city, who was an amateur go player, ordered the players not to play there, since it was too dangerous. However, when the police chief was called away on official business, the players, taking advantage of his absence, ignored his order and played the first game of the match July 23-25 under a rain of bullets from strafing airplanes. 

When the chief returned and heard that a game had been played, he was furious and fabade players in no uncertain terms from playing any more games in Hiroshima. 

Another venue was found in Itsukaichi, an outer suburb of Hiroshima, and the second game was played there Aug. 4-6. 

On the morning of Aug. 6, Hashimoto happened to be in the garden when the atomic bomb was dropped. He saw a brilliant flash of light and the mushroom cloud rise above the city. A tremendous blast of wind shattered all the windows and turned the playing room into a shambles. The position on the board had to be set up again. Under these circumstances, they managed to complete the game; Hashimoto won by five points. 

That evening, atomic-bomb survivors started to pour into Itsukaichi and the players began to understand the magnitude of the disaster and just how lucky they were. The house in which they were to have played their game was destroyed and its owner killed. 

The war ended a week later and the match was resumed in November, ending in a 3-3 tie. A playoff became necessary, but Japan was in such disarray that it was not until July 1946 that a best-of-three playoff was arranged. Iwamoto won the first two games, and thereby took the Honinbo title. 

Hashimoto and Iwamoto were important forces in the go world during the years following the war. Had they been killed in Hiroshima that fateful day, the history of go today would most likely be quite different. 

Iwamoto defended the Honinbo title against Minoru Kitani in 1947, but Hashimoto came back in 1959 to recapture it. Then, with the prestige of holding the top title in the go world at that time, Hashimoto broke away from the Japan Go Association and formed the Western Japan Go Association. Although, a bitter rivalry existed between these two organizations for a while, they coexist amicably today and cooperate on many levels to promote go in Japan. 

Iwamoto, who will be 97 on Feb. 5, has contributed much to the popularization of go in the West. In 1929, he retired as a go player and immigrated to Brazil. However, two years later he returned to Japan and resumed his go-playing career. Perhaps it was this experience that caused him to want to make go a truly international game. He has gone on numerous overseas tours and has established go centers in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Seattle and New York.

Just for the record, let me say this: after reading about this game, I started reading about the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, bombings of Tokyo, etc. It is my opinion that targeting civilians by bombing raids the way Allies did in the World War II in Japan (not just the atomic bombs, but also bombings of Tokyo with incendiary bombs) and Germany (e.g., Dresden, Berlin) is not much different from what Islamic terrorists do today. Probably not different at all. And therefore, there is not much difference between President Truman who made a decision to destroy two cities full of thousands of civilians (eventually leading to the deaths of close to 200,000 people) and Osama Bin Laden.

I am ashamed of the times when I excused such things by calling them collateral damage. This was not collateral damage. This was terrorism.

Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

— Leo Szilard

Go Seigen vs. Fujisawa Kuranosuke, 1953

By the way, Go Seigen (born in China) is still alive. He is in his late 90s. Here he is young:



Apparently, after the war, Go Seigen joined some sort of religious organization/cult and as a result had to leave Japan's national Go organization. He was unable to participate in the national championships for a while. Not to worry: he played in many games against the strongest Go players; the encounters were sponsored by the newspapers and Go journals that published the records of the games.

Just another evidence that you don't need government to sponsor art and intellectual pursuits such as board games or science.

Liking fish

Fish, as one Russian commercial said, is a girl’s best friend.

In any event, a small excerpt from Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman:

I had decided that I was going to live Japanese as much as I could. That meant eating fish. I never liked fish when I was growing up, but I found out in Japan that it was a childish thing: I ate a lot of fish, and enjoyed it. (When I went back to the United States the first thing I did was go to a fish place. It was horrible — just like it was before. I couldn’t stand it. I later discovered the answer: The fish has to be very, very fresh — if it isn’t, it gets a certain taste that bothers me.)

One time when I was eating at the Japanese-style hotel I was served a round, hard thing, about the size of an egg yolk, in a cup of some yellow liquid. So far I had eaten everything in Japan, but this thing frightened me: it was all convoluted, like a brain looks. When I asked the girl what it was, and she replied “kuri”. That didn’t help much. I figured it was probably an octopus egg, or something. I ate it, with some trepidation, because I wanted to be as much in Japan as possible. (I also remembered the word “kuri” as if my life depended on it — I haven't forgotten it in thirty years.)

The next day I asked a Japanese guy at the conference what this convoluted thing was. I told him I had found it very difficult to eat. What the hell was “kuri”?

“It means ‘chestnut’,” he replied.

In light of the current situation with climate

Being small helps sometimes

I was thinking of writing on the difference between different nations’ cultural mesoiras, accomplishments and focus, but I won’t. It seems obvious. Vdal.



There is something to be said for being small and flexible — like a palm tree that can withstand a storm vs. a cypress that will fall.

Being 190 cm (6'3") tall, however, I don’t think I can pull this off (I had problems while fencing too; if somebody got “within” my reach and I didn’t retreat fast enough, it was difficult for me to parry — a disadvantage balancing or even outweighing a benefit of longer reach). So, I’ll have to settle for a gun.

I wonder if this guy’s poking fun at his opponents actually hurts more than his physical abuse of them.

Medicine under socialism

If you listen to liberals, under capitalism, evil and greedy hospital owners will be free to throw poor people out on the street to die. Reduced costs of medicine due to capital investments and deregulation will never happen, of course. Nor will anybody ever help out poor people to get health care — unless the government robs him.

Under socialism, of course, this could never happen. Every poor person is taken care of.

A thought on Arabs

(German prisoners of war in Moscow)

WWII and post-WWII history teaches us a very important lesson applicable to the war with Arabs.

If we are to defeat the Muslim civilization in this war, like we defeated Germans and Japanese, there is only one way to do it.

Break them. Defeat them militarily, dominate and publicly humiliate (primarily in their own eyes) their culture, and turn them into soft-spoken, leather-wearing hippies. There is no other solution.

German and Japanese nations suffered a number of military and cultural defeats throughout history, yet they remained the same. They retained the same ambitions and goals and behaved the same way during subsequent wars. Until they were defeated, occupied, nullified and transformed.

One cannot domesticate a wolf. It needs to be turned into a dog.

* * *

Update: As this post notes, Israel has already achieved pretty good results with Egypt and Jordan. OK, not complete transformation like in Japan and Germany, but something one can live with…

A slippery slope of dressing like women. Importance of a beard

(this guy skipped a few steps)

This is what happens. First, men start trimming their beards (bad idea according to Kabbala). Then they start shaving (halachically forbidden according to Tzemach Tzedek). And the next thing you know — they are wearing bras. OK, not exactly, but according to Judaism, shaving is considered to be an activity that leads to men imitating female look, which is forbidden to Jews (as is practice of women imitating masculine look).

Many people believe that just because it says in Shulchan Aruch and Rambam that it is OK to trimm one’s beard, these sources allow use of electric shavers that “trim” all the way to no beard (as opposed to obviously forbidden shaving with a razor). That’s not true. Shulchan Aruch and Rambam talk about halachically allowed (although still kabbalistically forbidden) trimming of beard to maintain a symmetric shape. According to Tzemach Tzedek (whose psak din relates not only to Chabad Chassidim but arguably to all Jews of Russian heritage), trimming all the way down to no beard is immitating a female look, which is not allowed.

In general, having a beard is considered in Judaism a sign of fear of heaven (a Russian shochet who moved to Germany and started shaving should not be bought meat from). In Chassidus, it is considered important to have an untrimmed beard. Listen to Rabbi Paltiel’s shiur explaining the reasons.

* * *

Coming back to the topic of male bras. Those Japanese… what would we do without them? They are the only ones with common sense not only in cars, but, as it turns out, in clothes too.

“Executive director of Wishroom, Akiko Okunomiya, hopes the [men bras] will help men understand women better.” Umm… Yes. This makes sense. I think… Get even more in touch with our feminine side to understand women. And women should get more in touch with their masculine side to understand men. (Women playing Unreal Tournament and paintball, drinking beer and watching soccer? Sounds good to me.)

Regarding this new phenomenon in men’s attire. I’ll go out on a limb and say this is probably assur.

I wonder, however, how long it will take for some MO rabbis to declare that it’s OK, since in our culture, an image of a man in a bra is not shocking (after all, Seinfeld already introduced the concept) — especially, if it contributes to a man’s feeling of self-worth. Just like women feel inadequate by not being given opportunity to wear talles… well, you get the idea. (Lehavdil.)

* * *

Returning to the topic of beards, a joke.

A modern, cleanely-shaven Jew is approached by a traditional-looking Jew with a full beard. The latter says to the former:
— When you go up to Heaven, they will ask you: “Jew, where is your beard?”
The first Jew answers:
— And when you go to Heaven, they will ask: “Beard, where is your Jew?”