© 2013 John Fairbairn

Unfinished Symphony

Go Seigen’s ten-game match
with Karigane Junichi

by John Fairbairn

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From the GoGoD Archives
(GoGoD site).

This is an account of the lead-up to and progress of the (shortened) ten-game match between Go Seigen and Karigane Junichi in 1941~42.

Biographical details of both players are given, all the games are commented, and an appendix also contains a commentary of another game involving Karigane. The account of Karigane includes extensive details about the Keiinsha.

This book is intended to fit into a framework of previous and forthcoming books on Go Seigen’s matches, but this is the first complete version of these books to appear in the interactive SmartGo format.

For those viewing the sample pages only, the section on Karigane’s life is a fuller description than ever before, including details of Karigane’s tragic first love, Baron Okura’s polemic against Takabe Dohei, Takabe’s court case over allegedly libellous comments on his grading, and the inside story of the Keiinsha. Since only five games of the ten-game match (all fully commented) were played and perhaps do not show Karigane in his best, another fully commented game from his early career has been added to create balance. Karigane’s other games against Go are included in an appendix.

About the Author

John Fairbairn is one of the partnership with T Mark Hall that produces the GoGoD (Games of Go on Disc) database. He has written or translated many go books, especially on historical aspects. He lives in London and has played go for fifty years.

© John Fairbairn

All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited.

Cover design © by Alison Fairbairn

Contents

Introduction

Go Seigen’s timeline

Genesis of the match

Karigane Junichi’s biography

Karigane Junichi’s timeline

The Keiinsha

Game 1: The one with the salt scrub and ice block

Game 2: The one that’s really famous

Game 3: The one with the buy one, get one free

Game 4: The one with the Avalanche novelty

Game 5: The one after China

Aftermath

Now for something completely different

Appendix 1: Table of games between Go and Karigane

Appendix: Books by John Fairbairn

Cover

Book description

About the author

Buy This Book

About SmartGo Books

Introduction

This book is the fourth in a series on the ten-game matches played by Go Seigen when he was at the top of the go world in the mid-20th century. The first three books were successfully published on paper by Slate & Shell, but changing markets have dictated a switch to an electronic format.

The new, interactive format aside, the pattern of the previous books has been changed only slightly. Essentially the same kind of information is given – biographies of the players, considerable detail on the background to the matches and extensive commentaries. But there has been a big change in the way I planned to cover the matches of the late wartime period and its aftermath. Apart from the match with Karigane, Go also faced Hashimoto Utaro and Iwamoto Kaoru under grim post-war conditions. Remarkably, all the people involved in these matches nevertheless lived very long lives, and so I was attracted by the idea of covering the matches under a collective heading of something like “Survivors.” A more important point was that this highly stressful period in Go’s life led to what now seems a bizarre encounter with a spiritualist as he sought solace in religion. It made sense to cover that in a single volume.

That plan has changed. I have had to learn how to be a “cool” Apple person (actually a cheap imitation thereof) and how to format books for the SmartGo program. Baby steps were called for. I therefore split that proposed tome into the three constituent matches and started anew with the shortest match. For similar reasons, an explanation of Go’s search for a religious anchor in his life will be deferred to the later books.

Of course, the first book in the overall series, Kamakura, also described a wartime match (with Kitani Minoru) but that was early in the war when things were not going too badly in Japan, and so it was possible to reflect rather a bright tone: the emergence of two still young players who had been in the forefront of New Fuseki.

The following two books, Final Summit (Go’s last ten-game match, with Takagawa Kaku) and 9-dan Showdown (his matches with Fujisawa Kuranosuke), were more chiaroscuro affairs. Both Go himself and his go were more mature (and perhaps he was even at the start of a decline), but the country was at peace and on the road to economic recovery. It was still not easy for Go, as he had problems with citizenship and his status with the Nihon Ki-in, and it can be argued that he did not get the accolades he deserved. There was also a fateful motor cycle accident that played havoc with his bid to be the first Meijin. But in general the go world around him was changing rapidly and had a bright future in which he could still share.

The present book, however, is about games in the middle of the war when life was grim for everyone. It was much worse in the later matches, and of course his two opponents in those, Hashimoto and Iwamoto, would even feature in the famous Atom Bomb Game. But even at this stage Go, a Chinese in Japan when those two countries were at war, had special problems.

Incidentally, his opponent here, Karigane Junichi, was already an old man when he played the match against Go – he was born in 1879 – but as he died only in 1959, clearly he too was a survivor!

The second world war also had a great and negative impact on how the match was presented. During and after the war, the go world itself was naturally in turmoil, as were the newspapers it relied on for sponsorship. It was not until 1949 that reliable signs of recovery emerged. The match described here, and the two others, were before that date and were rather makeshift affairs, supported to a large extent also by private individuals. They did not attract, nor could they command, the sort of coverage that later matches did. With odd exceptions, the games have also therefore never become favourites with later anthology makers.

That is reflected especially here in the rather sparse commentaries of some of the games, and also in the relative lack of the colour – banter between the players, and so on – that has been a popular feature of my coverage of other matches.

Rather than mope about this, I took it as an opportunity. One way or another, in the earlier books, I have given a fairly comprehensive outline of the pre-war and immediate post-war go world. But there have been gaps, and so I decided to take the chance to fill some, thus compensating for the lack of game colour. This will be especially apparent in the later accounts devoted to Hashimoto and Iwamoto, but even in Karigane’s case it is possible to provide some intriguing details about his first love and the Keiinsha, for example.

Regular readers of the series will recall that the problems the go world faced in the mid-20th century were not just economic. There was also a sort of identity crisis. Honinbo Shusai had died in 1940, having sold off the traditional Honinbo and Meijin titles to the Nihon Ki-in. It might seem that if that was not the end of the traditional ways, the war, and the imposition of western values by the occupation forces, would certainly signal the end. But in fact tradition clung on in a very important way: komi or not komi. Just after the war it was far from clear how the Hamletian dilemma would be resolved. There was a trend towards use of komi, most notably in the Honinbo tournament, but there were powerful voices against it, and the very matches in which Go was involved bolstered the status of the no-komi form of combat. The issue was not to be resolved for another decade, and the tensions it engendered were part of the reasons for schisms soon about to emerge in the go world – the Igo Shinsha rebellion and the secession of the Kansai Ki-in.

On top of all that there was the situation in China. Obviously there were much more important things afoot there, but before the war China was seen as an area ripe for expansion by Japanese go administrators. Despite the emergence of two Manchurian Ki-ins (a story I tell in The Go Companion), this expansion never really happened, yet the early stages of 20th century contacts between China and Japan were still important for our story, because that is how Go Seigen, Hashimoto Utaro and Iwamoto Kaoru first came together. Both Hashimoto and Iwamoto spent some time in China, frequenting the very same go circle – the go meetings of warlord Duan Qirui – in which Go first came to fame. This ‘great man’ form of go sponsorship was traditional in China, but it too was on the verge of extinction and was to be almost wiped out by the war. It may not be too much of an exaggeration to claim that go in China itself has to be counted as one of our survivors precisely because Go Seigen was transplanted to Japan and was able to excel there. His fame helped keep the flame alive until the late 1960s, when Chinese go began a slow and tortuous road to recovery.

I have, however, sketched Go’s life in the earlier match books enough times to make me decide to omit even the broad strokes here. I have still to add some interesting new details about his wartime and religious activities, but they relate better to his matches with Hashimoto Utaro and Iwamoto Kaoru, and so will be left to those books.

Here, instead, a chronological table of Go’s life is given below, but with, first, the following extra detail about the period just before the match with Karigane.

On 24 March 1942, the Nihon Ki-in promoted its three elder statesmen, Suzuki Tamejiro, Segoe Kensaku and Kato Shin, to 8-dan. They were now, at least in theory, at the summit of the go world, dizzy heights that they shared – again in theory – with Karigane Junichi, though he belonged to a much smaller rival organisation, the Keiinsha. In practice, of course, Go Seigen certainly, and Kitani Minoru very probably, were stronger on the board.

The reasons for making a distinction between Go and Kitani naturally included Go’s defeat of Kitani in the Kamakura match, but there was also the fact that Go had been posting impressive results in the Oteai. Recall that Kitani’s promotion to 7-dan had been a special fast-track one, admittedly after a true annus mirabilis, whereas Go had slogged through the Oteai to achieve his 7-dan afterwards in 1939. But closer to hand, in the 1941 ‘Late’ session of the Oteai, Go may only have achieved third place, partly because of the vagaries of the points system, but he actually scored 5–1:

1–0 with White vs. Sakata Eio 5-dan

1–0 with Black vs. Iwamoto Kaoru 7-dan

1–0 with White vs. Takagawa Kaku 6-dan

1–0 with White vs. Hashimoto Utaro 6-dan

0–1 with White vs. Fujisawa Kuranosuke 6-dan

1–0 with Black vs. Kitani Minoru 7-dan

‘Late’ session really meant the Autumn session of previous years, but it signified that games now ran on into the following year (apart from nasties such as conscription, the problem was that certain players, like Go, were more heavily involved in newspaper tournaments). Go was playing these games in the middle of his match with Karigane. In other matches he was able to devote himself entirely to the ten-game match.

Incidentally, the records of the above games against Takagawa (on 1941–10–04) and Fujisawa (on 1942–01–14) are among the many that have been lost.

In the ‘Early’ (i.e. Spring though it went on till August) session of the 1942 Oteai, Go likewise scored 5–1, but this time also achieved the best points score and so scooped the ¥300 first prize:

0–1 with White vs. Sekiyama Riichi 7-dan

1–0 with White vs. Nakagawa Arata 5-dan

1–0 with White vs. Hasegawa Akira 6-dan

1–0 with Black vs. Onoda Chiyotaro 6-dan

1–0 with White vs. Hayashi Yutaro 7-dan

1–0 with White vs. Shimamura Toshihiro 6-dan

The other main events for Go in this period were his marriage, of which more later, and a couple of trips to China, the second of which was after the match and was part of the war effort.

Genesis of the match

Go Seigen stood at the top of the go world in 1941 aged just twenty-seven, having decisively defeated his main rival Kitani Minoru in the Kamakura ten-game match, which spanned 21 months from September 1939 to June 1941. Since Kitani was his main rival in the Nihon Ki-in, there was really no-one else there worthy of stepping up to the plate.

Karigane meanwhile had split with Takabe Dohei and left the Kiseisha in 1941. He then nailed his colours to the mast of the Keiinsha. He was already about to turn sixty-two, considered old in those days. But shortly after the Kamakura match, the chairman of the sponsor, the Yomiuri Shinbun, was told by a doctor friend that Karigane had said to him, “If it’s against Go Seigen, I’d like to play.”

The chairman, Shoriki Matsutaro, went into overdrive. He had the deputy head of the newspaper’s department that dealt with go and shogi, Mihori Sho, introduce him to Watanabe Shokichi 6-dan, who was Karigane’s son-in-law (and so effectively also Karigane’s heir).

The majority of the Kiseisha’s players had switched allegiance to the Keiinsha because of the ever-smiling Karigane’s affable nature, and he was the grand old man of the go world anyway, and so the Nihon Ki-in did not see him as any sort of outsider or rebel (Honinbo Shusai had died in 1940, of course). Negotiations could therefore proceed swiftly.

The condition that they should play on equal terms, with no handicap, was accepted by Karigane without demur, even though nominally he was 8-dan and Go 7-dan. The only slight sticking point was time limits. Go wanted short ones, Karigane long. In the end a compromise was reached. They would be fourteen hours each, not as much as Karigane really wanted but an hour more than in the Kamakura match. They would play each game over three days.

As to the venue, in order to avoid the grime and hassle of the city, the Yomiuri made available its beach house – a company recreation centre – in Koshigoe, Kamakura City. There were eight main rooms there, but Mihori successfully advised Shoriki to have a spanking new room built in the style of a tea-ceremony house at the back of the complex, halfway up a pine-clad hillside and surrounded by other fine scenery.

The first game was to begin on 5 August 1941.

Game 1

The one with the salt scrub and ice block

White: Go Seigen 7-dan
Black: Karigane Junichi 8-dan
Komi: 0
Handicap: B-W
Time: 14 hours each
Date: 5, 6 and 7 August 1941
Place: Yomiuri Beach House, Koshigoe, Kamakura

Go had just finished his victorious ten-game match with Kitani on 6 June 1941. To resume another gruelling match so soon after was unusual. To play such a serious game at the height of summer was perhaps even more unusual, although this was made just tolerable by the venue, the Yomiuri Shinbun’s recreational centre with its aspect of the long sands at Kamakura, specifically the famous Seven-mile Beach, Shichirigahama.

Koshigoe township was no stranger to rivalries. Most Japanese people know of the 12th century “Letter from Koshigoe” dictated by Minamoto no Yoshitsune to his famous attendant Benkei in which he begged his half-brother Yoritomo to believe in his loyalty. It ended badly, with Yoshitsune’s head pickled in sake. The story of these rival siblings is a staple of kabuki and noh plays.

Go, however, made sure he was ready for this game by pickling himself, taking a salt scrub the evening before, to bolster his fighting spirit. However, he may have also been trying to avoid the depressing conversation that evening, which was all about Japan’s military prospects. Still, he continued with the salt regime each morning, and kept pine nut leaf essence – supposedly good for refreshing the memory and aiding relaxation – close to hand. Outside the playing room he made no conversation, and kept to his own room.

At the board, he used noticeably more time than usual in the opening. This was all somewhat uncharacteristic of him, but he was acutely aware of the responsibility he bore on behalf of the Nihon Ki-in.

Some sources have the date of this game as 7~9 August, which seems more likely to be the date of publication. Mihori Sho organised it, was there, and gave the dates as 5~7, so that is what we will go with.

As already mentioned, the handicap was B-W because Go, though still only 7-dan, had beaten Kitani 7-dan down to B-W-B. It seems that Karigane himself brought up this concession first, presumably to stimulate Yomiuri’s interest in the match. Nevertheless, since Karigane was both older and higher ranked, he had the privilege of grabbing the handful of white stones to begin the nigiri process. Go said, “Even, sente”, meaning that if the number of stones was even he would get Black for this first game. The number was odd, so Karigane took Black.

The venue was a special exhibition game room built by the Yomiuri in teahouse style, right near the long beach of Shichirigahama, which will be familiar to fans of Hokusai’s prints. The township of Koshigoe was also famous already in Edo times for its views of Mount Fuji and the holiday island of Enoshima. This being August it was very hot. To keep the players cool a large pillar of ice was erected in the playing room. It had a cooling effect as it melted – perhaps more psychological then physical – but it also meant a constant dripping sound in the background.

Moves 1–3

＞＜ ▶︎

Black 3 was already close to a novelty. Hasegawa Akira had played this Black formation against a star stone in a couple of games in 1936, but he was fond of the pillbox formation which begins with this mokuhazushi (5–3 point move), so we may safely assume Karigane played it for entirely different reasons. It seems pre-planned, as if to forestall any novelties Go might come up with, and also seems designed to tie the game up into narrow parcels early on, as befits a no-komi game for Black.

The pillbox, a term inherited from the Soviet army in the militaristic 1930s, is the corner enclosure made with the moves 1 and 3 in the diagram below. Black 3 can be at A.

Pillbox formation

＞＜ ▶︎

Move 4

＞＜ ▶︎

This was only the second time Go had played Karigane. The previous time was in 1931, when he was 4-dan and Karigane 7-dan, in a win & continue series sponsored by the Yomiuri Shinbun. Since Go was generally considered undergraded then, Karigane had done well to limit Go, as Black, to a 2-point victory with no komi. This game was the first time Go faced Karigane with White.

With White 4 in this fuseki – only its third outing – Go just had the limited experience of Kitani in two games against against Hasegawa in 1936 to go on. Kitani chose this move in his first encounter with Hasegawa, but switched to the star point in the lower left for the second one – maybe because Black won the first game.

A move in the lower left, usually the star point, has since become the preferred option.

Move 5

＞＜ ▶︎

Realising that Karigane was seeking to keep him off balance, Go seems to have entertained the possibility that for Black 5 Karigane might have continued as in Diagram 1.

Diagram 1

＞＜ ▶︎

Go said that he considers this an interesting way to play for Black. Despite his endorsement, this has been very, very rarely played, and one example was in the irregular case of move 1 of the game being at the centre point (in a game Yamashita Keigo versus Otake Hideo in 2000 – Black won).

Obviously, though, Diagram 1 is not the only possible line. Go gave a couple of lines for a different response to Black’s kosumi attachment.

Diagram 2

＞＜ ▶︎

I imagine Diagram 2 would look scary to most amateurs if they had to play White here, but it should be playable for White if we apply the common heuristics for the value of wonky walls.

Assuming we count this as a seven-stone wall, we get 7 x (7–1) ÷ 2 = 21, or by another heuristic seven stones at three points each, with the same end value in this case.

Diagram 3

＞＜ ▶︎

Diagram 3 is another conceivable line where White descends at 2, though in practice this way of playing is likewise very rare. But part of this line has indeed been tried in practice: Kajiwara Takeo played it versus Shimamura Toshihiro in 1964, and Takemiya played almost the same line against Okumura Hideo in 1991 as part of a large moyo game. In each case, of course, the rest of the position differed from the present game.

Both Kajiwara and Okumura played 9 of Diagram 3 at 10, whereupon their opponents pushed up at 22.

Moves 5–10

＞＜ ▶︎

The line chosen by Black in this game is an old-fashioned joseki which is still very popular. White 10 here, however, does not complete the joseki – the usual move would be White 1 in Diagram 4. There is some refined thinking behind this.

Diagram 4

＞＜ ▶︎

Obviously the first consideration is that the usual joseki-completion move White 1 in Diagram 4 would give Black first dibs on the lower left corner. Go suggested Black 2 or A, though we may wish to assume that Karigane, as a traditionalist, might have chosen a komoku point. Still, whichever point is chosen, giving Black prior occupancy of three corners would be rash.

If White omits this White 1, however, and grabs the corner as in the game, he needn’t then feel too bad about his incomplete group above: his triangled stones have settled that area to a large degree and so have seriously limited Black’s options on the left.

At a tewari level, too, (that is, analysing the efficiency of moves in either a stone-count or an order-of-moves way) we can observe that if the six triangled stones of both colours had been exchanged first, Black would then hardly want to play at the squared-stone point. In other words, White’s incomplete position is partly offset by an inefficiency in Black’s position.

Move 11

＞＜ ▶︎

With Black 11, however, Karigane failed to capitalise, at least locally, on White’s neglect on the left side and let him repair his position at once there.

But whilst Black 11 is a standard developing move (the Korean term haengma is becoming popular for that among western players now) in this shape, and it is certainly a powerful move, Segoe rather sniffily pointed out that it just gives White peace of mind for the moment. He said a simple pincer first at Black 1 in Diagram 5 would be usual here.

Diagram 5

＞＜ ▶︎

Black’s initial pincer can also be at 4. Even if Karigane’s concerns about getting embroiled in the lower left corner were justified, he still had the option of knocking White about a bit first as here and still gets his haengma knight’s move at the top. White can cope easily enough by means of the crosscut at 6, but it can be useful for Black in that he is able to treat his two moves on the side either as a probe or an aji investment.

Diagram 6

＞＜ ▶︎

Go said the move for Black 11 in the game he would have found most discomfiting was Black 1 in Diagram 6 (Diagram 7 will show an alternative line).

Diagram 7

＞＜ ▶︎

An obvious alternative for White is the pincer line of Diagram 7, but whilst this leads to a simple joseki exchange, overall it leaves White dissatisfied because his left side is too exposed. He really needs another move at A but is naturally loth to fall a tempo behind by overinvesting on the left side.

However, Karigane was not partial to the distant approach of Black 1 in these variations. He only ever played it a couple of times. Incidentally, if that makes him sound like even more of a stodgy traditionalist, it seems he may never have had the distant approach played against him, so his own few attempts were actually quite daring!

Diagram 8

＞＜ ▶︎

There is also the simple wedge fuseki of Diagram 8. There is nothing specially wrong with this.

Finally, because this is a rather interesting position theoretically in all sorts of ways, let us look briefly at what initially might seem the most obvious move by Black: Diagram 9.

Diagram 9

＞＜ ▶︎

Black does not really want to approach close enough to give White a perfect pincer, and that means eschewing even the high approach of Black 1 here. In this case White would happily pincer at A or B.

Game figure repeated

＞＜ ▶︎

However, in Karigane’s defence, it should be said that he was fond of moves like Black 11 on principle – a theoretical principle. The principle is kurai (位). The basic meaning is ‘position’ or ‘level’ but there is a strong nuance of height about it. The term is not met with much nowadays, partly because it is more associated with traditional go and partly because it seems to be a term that pros like to use among themselves but not when talking to amateurs. It is also a term especially favoured by those familiar with shogi (Japanese chess) where it is a very important concept even for amateurs, rather like control of the central four squares in international chess. In shogi it has to do with control of the entire central rank, which – because shogi has nine ranks – means that occupation of the central rank makes it look as if you have a high position.

In traditional go, having a high position per se was not usually a major target in the fuseki, and so there was little thought of playing as in New Fuseki. But there might come a point in the game when you felt you were being pressurised into having too low a position (位が低い) – don’t forget that most plays would be on the third line, anyway – and in that case you would want to ‘maintain your position’ (位を保つ) by playing high somewhere. In those cases, a move such as Black 11 was considered apposite. Modern players tend to talk more often about ‘balance’, perhaps, but if you are talking about actively resisting your opponent’s efforts to make you grovel on the third line, ‘maintaining your position’ might be the preferred term.

Moves 12–15

＞＜ ▶︎

Black 13 is necessary to give meaning to Black 11 (triangled), and of course White 14 is a straightforward big point. But Black 15 can be debated. Yes, it gives him an apparently wonderful shape at the top (though Go derided it as “too wide”), but he is also putting all his eggs in one basket and falling behind elsewhere. Compare Diagram 10, suggested by Go.

Diagram 10

＞＜ ▶︎

Here, Black still has a good position at the top not unduly harmed by White’s invasion of the corner, has put down strong roots on the right side, and has sent an advance party down to the lower side.

Diagram 11

＞＜ ▶︎

Another possibility for Black 1 of Diagram 10 was 1 in Diagram 11, expecting White 2, Black 3.

Game figure repeated

＞＜ ▶︎

Another argument against Black 15 of the game is that if White plays a cap there, Black has a perfectly respectable defence at A, and in fact that works rather well with the triangled stone to the left.

Moves 16–17

＞＜ ▶︎

White 16 is a standard probe and has several standard replies. Black 17, giving White no leverage, is probably best here. The reply that White would have liked is Diagram 12.

Although we can now say ‘standard probe’, you may be interested in the discussion of such moves in my Life, Games and Commentaries of Honinbo Shuei, in which I pointed out that such plays are of relatively recent provenance, at least as far as being regarded as standard goes.

Diagram 12

＞＜ ▶︎

Here White gets to make some early progress on the right side while keeping Black limited to the top. If Black tries to take the lead on the right side with Black 3 at 6, White A is a good way for White to mess with Black.

White 8 could also be at B.

Black can opt to emphasise the outside instead, and in that case he ought to switch to a more aggressive posture as in Diagram 13.

Diagram 13

＞＜ ▶︎

In this line, White would not want to answer Black in the corner as in Diagram 14, because that is a ko at best and even if he wins it he will be helping Black to solidify the upper side.

Diagram 14

＞＜ ▶︎

In the context of this game, therefore, White would have to try to find some leverage against the upper side, and for that Go suggested White 4 of Diagram 13. The result is not too easy to evaluate. Incidentally, Go thought that Black had to play this way rather than as in the game.

Moves 17–18

＞＜ ▶︎

Although Black 17 has neutralised White’s designs against the corner, White is still pleased to treat the exchange there as a free forcing move before occupying the right side with the bog standard big-point extension at 18. But no doubt part of Black’s thinking with Black 17 was that there were two big side points left; 18 is one and he is about to get the other one with Black 19. The question is: where?

Move 19

＞＜ ▶︎

Black’s choice of a big point on the lower side is not a case of thoughtlessly plonking a stone down right in the middle.

I recently had a conversation in which I suggested that amateurs do tend to opt for the symmetrical move rather too often. Thinking about it afterwards, I became even more convinced. Among the reasons why such moves can be flawed, one is seeing symmetry when there is no real symmetry there. Black 1 in Diagram 15 is a case in point.

Diagram 15

＞＜ ▶︎

After White 2 and 4 in the diagram, Black is safe enough for the moment, but he has ended up playing close to White’s strength and so will give him thickness, which will make it much harder for Black to invade on the left side, say at A.

Moves 20–21

＞＜ ▶︎

With White 20 we are now at the level of second-tier big points. It is important to realise that Black 21 is indeed a big point. Of course it gives Black a base and so on, but the real priority is to deny White a move at A.

Note, incidentally, that if White had played the triangled stone after White 20, Black would have no hesitation now in answering at B, and so White can chalk up a little bit of profit already in that he has made Black create a less than perfect shape in the corner. And, in that connection, if White had played 20 on the lower side at A, Black would answer at C. The triangled stone would then have become ajikeshi (loss of aji or potential), having let Black mostly secure the corner.

Move 22

＞＜ ▶︎

White 22 is another of the contact plays of which Go was so fond (and for which he was famous – but see later). He reaped an immediate benefit in this case since Karigane chose, probably rightly in the circumstances, to defend tightly but with more than a hint of overconcentration. In contrast White 22 and his next move end up looking extremely efficient.

The problem with White 22 at A would be that it is a one-dimensional checking move. Since Black already has a two-space extension, A is just checking his expansion and is not really attacking him.

[Rest of chapter omitted in sample.]