The Survivors: Matches between Go Seigen and Iwamoto Kaoru 1948 ~ 1954

Go Seigen was probably the greatest go player of the 20th century. As a Chinese player brought to live in Japan prior to World War II, when the game of go was extensively used as a diplomatic tool by Japanese politicians, he was also bound up in many historical events.John Fairbairn has already chronicled several of the famous ten-game matches between Go and the best players the Japanese could muster. The first was "Kamakura," played during the war. In each book, as also here, all the match games are given with long commentaries based on multiple professional sources. In addition, the background is given in detail, including extensive biographical details.Go's own life has been amply covered in previous books, and so is given mainly in tabulated form in the present book, although significant new details are interwoven with the commentaries. For his match opponent, however, Iwamoto Kaoru, extensive space has been devoted to biographical details of a player who has special significance in the West. Iwamoto left the game of go for a while in the 1930s to try to become a coffee farmer in Brazil. He (and his wife) suffered many great hardships, which were not to end when he returned to Japan, because he was one of the players in the famous Atom Bomb Game in 1945.The present ten-game match took place in 1948, with post-war woes still affecting Japan. Go Seigen, too, had had a fraught time up to and through the war, being accused of being a traitor in China and suffering racist attacks in Japan. During the war itself he was fire-bombed out of his house. For a time after the war, in mental turmoil, he too left go for a while, taking up with a new religion. Like Iwamoto, he too was a survivor, and the present match was a first step on the road to recovery. Since no-one could be sure this would happen, a 'secret' game was arranged before the match, to ensure both players could perform as hoped. That game, revealed only in 1980, is given here, too.Also included is a three-game match between Go and Iwamoto several years later. Happily, both men truly were survivors and lived very long lives. In Iwamoto's case, his latter years were spent largely on efforts to promote go internationally. He gave up a large proportion of his own assets to found go centres in several western cities. Tht story is told here, too.The book, using colour, is in what has now become the normal Go Wisdom format for John Fairbairn's books. That means they are designed to promote effortful study, with all go concepts carefully indexed and described so that they can be studied across the various books, giving a wealth of commented examples, styles and eras for each concept (including Edo period go for Japan and various classical eras for China). Read more