Meijin
Wrapping myself in a bathrobe, I settle into a chair on the terrace of our suite and work my way through a recent collection of game records from the Japanese professional circuit.
The myth of Japanese Go, supreme and unrivaled from the seventeenth century through the twentieth, had begun to creak at the seams toward the end of that last century.
The aestheticism that reached its apex under Honinbo Shusaku, the saint of Japanese Go, had steadily refined the game's efficiency in Japan.
Players shunned the so-called ugly shapes — the empty triangle, the bamboo-hat formation, the two-stone head — formations that looked clumsy, and chased beauty instead.
A pursuit of the aesthetic, born of the conviction that beauty was efficiency itself.
On the grandest scale, it had been right. Japanese Go's efficiency and its aesthetics advanced hand in hand over long centuries, and the game enjoyed its golden age.
But that very Japanese aesthetic, once the crowning glory that had let Japanese Go reign over the world, had now curdled into a fossilized dogma dragging at its ankles.
Go's essence, in the end, is competition — not art.
Obsessed with form, the philosophy had put the cart before the horse, binding players to convention at the expense of victory.
Every new taboo shrinks a player's options, and with fewer options comes less flexibility, until the game grows rigid.
Crude, unpolished, relentlessly practical fighting moves rarely appear in Japanese Go.
Even now, with Japan's decline on the world stage in full swing, they cannot bring themselves to abandon a philosophy of Go built on aesthetics.
Understandable, perhaps. A tradition carried for that long is not easily cast aside.
And yet, despite its fall in standing, Japanese Go still possesses a charm all its own.
Romantic, intuitive, beautiful. If nothing revolutionary is happening there, the frontline professionals of the Nihon Ki-in are at least working to change, absorbing the methods of Chinese and Korean Go.
-Ding-dong.
The doorbell shatters my concentration.
My parents and grandfather are enjoying the baths right now, so, feeling more than a little awkward, I head for the entrance wearing nothing but my robe.
"Forgive me for interrupting your rest. A gift and a letter have arrived for Miss Ryu Seoa, and I've come to deliver them."
A fruit basket, a tea set, and an accompanying letter.
It seems rather excessive to be a complimentary service from the hotel.
"Oh! Thank you very much!"
"Then I'll take my leave. Please enjoy another wonderful day."
I set the gifts down and open the letter inside. It's written in English with a Korean translation beneath.
I hope this letter reaches you in good health. It is nothing much, but I have prepared a small gift, and I would be delighted if you would accept it without any sense of obligation. Though belated, please accept my sincere congratulations on your victory in the Huahe Cup and on securing the youngest-ever berth in the Yangchangqi Cup main tournament. The reason I write to you is that our association....
"...the Nihon Ki-in?"
The preamble is long, but the heart of the matter is simple: the Nihon Ki-in wants to invite me to play an exhibition match.
How did they even know I was here.... Were we photographed without our knowledge....
We came here for a retreat, and I've barely been out and about — when on earth was it taken?
"Whew...."
Even back when I was Shin Changmo, fresh off a world title, I never once received this kind of overzealous attention from the media. So it really is because of my gender, my age, my face.
I don't want Go stealing hours from me on a family trip, but....
The Room of Yugen — the special match room on the fifth floor of the Nihon Ki-in.
I've always harbored a quiet longing to play a match inside it someday, and that's what makes this so hard to refuse.
"Well... one day can't hurt."
Unable to let go of my greed, I finish rationalizing it. My parents will understand if I spend just one day on myself.
Natsumura Yasuto, Honorary Honinbo. The undisputed number one, holder of five of Japan's seven major titles.
Unrivaled on the Japanese circuit, they say. He is the brightest star of Japanese Go, displaying a level of skill so overwhelming that one can only bow to it.
And yet his activity on the world stage has faltered.
Not from any lack of ability — the fault lies with the Nihon Ki-in's restrictions.
Competing in all of Japan's seven major titles alone leaves little room to digest a world-tournament schedule. But if Natsumura Yasuto, the Honorary Honinbo and the single biggest draw in the sport, were to sit out the seven majors, the displeased sponsors might well withdraw their money. As a natural consequence, the number of international events he can enter is kept vanishingly small.
The Honorary Honinbo had long chafed at this. A professional's duty is to test his limits.
If he were driven from the great stage by his own inadequacy, he would accept it. Instead, the chance to even try had been stripped from him by his own association's constraints.
Already crushed by a relentless schedule, and the best the Ki-in could devise was an exhibition match against a Korean girl — a eleven-year-old rising star.
A flash of displeasure had made him prepare a courteous refusal, but then he read the articles about Ryu Seoa 2-dan of Korea and saw that she had become the youngest player ever to qualify for the Yangchangqi Cup. He changed his mind.
No amount of prose could tell him how formidable an eleven-year-old girl's Go might be — but at the very least, she had proven herself worthy of the world stage, which meant she would make a worthy training opponent.
The Nihon Ki-in, it seemed, had been loath to let their rivals at the Kansai Ki-in walk away with such a lucrative attraction. The moment Ryu Seoa 2-dan's trip to Japan became the talk of the portals, they had scrambled to fix a date.
The match is scheduled for today, in fact.
He normally wears a suit to his matches, but wanting to dress the occasion up as a proper exhibition, they had requested traditional attire.
He steps into the match hall in a somewhat sour mood — and there, seated with perfect composure, is a girl of strikingly refined Western beauty.
A girl of radiant looks, dressed in a yukata with a touch of light makeup.
When they exchange a brief bow, he finally understands why the Nihon Ki-in had made such a fuss over her. It becomes equally natural to grasp why her fanbase so far outstrips Hozumi Asana's.
The girl shifts in her seat, as though her clothing feels unfamiliar, yet there's a faint excitement about her at finding herself in a match room laid out as a serene tatami chamber.
It's the natural reaction of anyone visiting the special match hall for the first time — and it stings.
He understands the girl came to Japan on holiday. She has come here the way one might come to a picnic. She is here, he imagines, to enjoy an exhibition match purely for its own sake, not for the contest.
He can accept that their purposes differ. She was merely invited; it is his own greed to want her to take the game seriously.
But if she has come to play with a casual heart, then she must also be prepared to be humiliated in defeat.
Natsumura Yasuto, Honorary Honinbo, reins in his anger and gathers his thoughts.