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New Ways in Go

方円新法

A complete translation of
Honinbo Shuho’s classic
Hoen Shinpo

by John Fairbairn

to the memory of
T Mark Hall
(1947~2013)

From the GoGoD Archives
(GoGoD site).

Buy the full book at gobooks.com

Description

Honinbo Shuho set up his revolutionary organisation the Hoensha in parlous times for go in Japan. It was during the Meiji Restoration, in the late 19th century aftermath of the ending of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the traditional sponsors of elite go.

Shuho was revolutionary because he sought support instead from politicians, diplomats and businessmen – and the common man. Furthermore, the Hoensha was Japan’s first national go association. Through the distinguished foreign clientele he attracted, Shuho was also responsible for the first major interest in go in the west.

His classic book on “New Ways in Go” (Hoen Shinpo) shows how he brought go to amateurs on a large scale for the first time – through an explanation of openings from even games down to four stones – and how he advanced the then immature art of commentary. He thus paved the way for the superb commentaries by his junior co-pupil, Honinbo Shuei, I have given already in the SmartGo book Life, Games and Commentaries of Honinbo Shuei. There, and in other books listed in an appendix, I have described the go world of the time in some detail.

The present book is simply a translation – a complete version – of a book that ranks high in the list of go classics. However, some extra material has been added: a timeline for Shuho and a selection of games in which he gives handicaps.

About the Author

John Fairbairn is one of the partnership with T Mark Hall that jointly produced the GoGoD (Games of Go on Disc) database.

GoGoD was interrupted by Mark’s untimely death in 2013 but has been resumed in his memory. This book is dedicated to his dedication, his inspiration and his memory.

John has written or translated many go books, especially on historical aspects. He lives in London and has played go for fifty years.

(c) John Fairbairn

Cover design (c) by Alison Fairbairn

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

Contents

Introduction

Book 1

Preface by Shigeno Yasutsugu

Four-stone openings 1 ~ 15

Items not highlighted in the Contents page are available in the full version.

Three-stone openings 1 ~ 15

Two-stone openings 1 ~ 20

Book 2

Even-game openings 1 ~ 30

Commentaries

Shuwa vs Shuho (1) – 1860–12–07
Shuwa vs Shuho (2) – 1860–12–12
Shuwa vs Shuho (3) – 1860–12–16
Shuwa vs Shuho (4) – 1860–12–26
Shuwa vs Shuho (5) – 1860–12–17
Shuwa vs Shuho (6) – 1871–05–13
Shuwa vs Shuho (7) – 1871–06–01
Shuho vs Shuwa (8) – 1871–06–22
Shuwa vs Shuho (9) – 1871–06–23
Shuwa vs Shuho (10) – 1871–07–23
Shusaku vs Shuho (1) – 1858–01–20
Shusaku vs Shuho (2) – 1861–05–17
Shusaku vs Shuho (3) – 1861–06–03
Shusaku vs Shuho (4) – 1861–09–25
Shusaku vs Shuho (5) – 1861–10–06
Shusaku vs Shuho (6) – 1861–10–15
Shusaku vs Shuho (7) – 1861–11–01
Shusaku vs Shuho (8) – 1861–11–07
Shusaku vs Shuho (9) – 1861–11–20
Shusaku vs Shuho (10) – 1861–12–08

Afterword by Miyoshi Kitoku

Appendix 1: Shuho’s Timeline

Appendix 2: Games by Shuho giving handicaps

Game 1: Shuho vs Yamamoto Tokuji (5 stones)
Game 2: Shuho vs Sannohe Yoshiaki (4 stones)
Game 3: Shuho vs Hayashi Sano (3 stones)
Game 4: Shuho vs Seki Genkichi (3 stones)
Game 5: Shuho vs Miyoshi Kitoku (3 stones)
Game 6: Shuho vs Ozaki Chuji (3 stones)
Game 7: Shuho vs Imai Kinemon (3 stones)
Game 8: Shuho vs Ito Genzaburo (3 stones)
Game 9: Shuho vs Ito Genzaburo (3 stones)
Game 10: Shuho vs Kajikawa Noboru (2 stones)
Game 11: Shuho vs Yasui Sanei (2 stones)
Game 12: Shuho vs Osawa Ginjiro (2 stones)
Game 13: Shuho vs Furusawa Kosai (2 stones)
Game 14: Shuho vs Ishii Senji (2 stones)
Game 15: Shuho vs Uchigaki Suekichi (-B-)
Game 16: Shuho vs Nakagawa Kamesaburo I (-B-)

Appendix: Books by John Fairbairn

Cover

Book description

About the author

Buy This Book

About SmartGo Books

Introduction

by John Fairbairn

Honinbo Shuho (1838 ~ 1886) was a product of the traditional iemoto (family head) system in the latter stages of the Tokugawa Shogunate, when Japan was carefully screened from outside influences. He became the Honinbo iemoto himself. But when Japan was opened up to the outside world during the Meiji Restoration, he was the first top player who had to deal with the PR side of go and securing new patrons.

Honinbo Shuho

He succeeded brilliantly. As teacher of Oskar Korschelt he might even be dubbed the godfather of western go. His most notable achievements, however, were leading the foundation of the Hoensha go association (which eventually led to the Nihon Ki-in), publishing and contributing to the Hoensha’s magazine Igo Shinpo (Go News) – and writing the book Hoen Shinpo (New Ways in Go), published in 1882.

Hoen Shinpo is regarded as a classic and as such is quoted even today. Usually, however, it is only the Book 2 commentaries on games against Honinbo Shuwa and Honinbo Shusaku that are quoted.

But that traduces the original work. The bulk of it is concerned with openings. This complete translation (to which I have added notes) is meant to ensure it is known in the west in its entirety.

Shuho filled his Book 1 with commentaries on handicap openings. He obviously had a reason for starting that way. He does not state the reason, but a reasonable first guess is that he wanted to engage with amateurs straightaway. The very tone of the commentaries encourages that estimate. Black’s moves are praised and the word ‘good’ sometimes seems to appear in almost every sentence. These openings are not cited as being from actual games. Indeed, it is possible that Shuho devised them himself, and if so he was praising his own moves. But that does not detract from the positive and engaging tone he sets up from his very first page. There is plenty of other evidence that suggests Shuho was a warm and benign man, though it should be said that criticism of his early lifestyle delayed his accession as Honinbo, and he was also capable of the odd put-down.

Concern for the amateur, or, more accurately perhaps, the new audience for go, meant that many things we take for granted nowadays had to be tackled.

For example, how should commentaries be written? What level of strength among readers should be assumed? Bearing in mind the available technology, how should diagrams be presented?

For Shuho this was still an age of experimentation. It is fascinating to see how he approached these problems. For example, the star points were marked with a small x rather than the dots or circles of later times. Coordinates were not marked but on-board symbols – triangles and egg-timers – were used.

The most unusual choice, however, may seem to be for the text. The preface is in Chinese. That was de rigueur for the time, as was the fact that it was not by the author but by a friend or patron (whose very first sentence shows how concerned Shuho was with presentation). Shuho’s own text uses katakana and no hiragana, which was obviously a conscious choice, though the precise reason cannot be known now.

As I have mentioned, there were western players in Japan at that time and they frequented Shuho’s salon. Apart from Oskar Korschelt, a German chemist who helped the Japanese brewing industry among other things, another notable visitor to the Hoensha was the British diplomat Sir Harry Parkes.

It is interesting that Korschelt, in his German work translated into English as The Theory & Practice of Go, complained even then about the iceberg-style of commentary (8/9ths below the surface) that was usual in Japanese books. He regretted the lack of “systematic and abstract” manuals such as existed for chess. There he may have remained stuck had it not been for a long illness which he used to overcome what he called the “tedious” elementary stages, by which time he was able to take personal instruction from Shuho and finally come to understand more of the depth of go via the Japanese route. By the time he left he was able to take six stones from Shuho, apparently.

Oskar Korschelt

This stimulated him on his return to Leipzig to write a book aimed specifically at a western audience. In this he makes very extensive use of Shuho’s Hoen Shinpo. He explained that Shuho kindly allowed him to use his diagrams even before they were published in Japan. You might assume, therefore, that Korschelt’s book pre-empts what we are doing here. Far from it. Korschelt’s comments appear to be his own, and certainly bear virtually no relation to Shuho’s commentary. Korschelt usually comments on moves that Shuho does not mention, and vice versa. The differences are so extreme that it is of interest to compare the two just to see how far apart a western amateur of about 1-dan strength and a Japanese Meijin can be in thinking about a game.

I have cross-referred positions here to Korschelt’s work and for that have used the still available English edition rather than the German original – in other words The Theory & Practice of Go published by Tuttle: ISBN 0–8048–1660–3 (1991 printing, below). Readers with spare moments may also wish to compile an equivalent cross-reference list for Arthur Smith’s The Game of Go, which was largely derived from Korschelt’s work.

Korschelt admitted to “exceptional pleasure” when studying Shuho’s openings, and I have already said that the book is still esteemed in Japan.

If you are prepared to meet it on its own terms, I believe you will share that esteem. When Korschelt wrote he was aiming at complete beginners. If we add that to his own cultural background and scientific training, it is no surprise he insisted on concentrating on the substance of a comment and fretting about lack of explanation of something and so ended up highlighting moves the Honinbo ignored. However, the western go audience nowadays is probably at a level comparable with Shuho’s own original audience in Japan, and so it seems reasonable to make my plea to meet him now on his own terms.

That essentially means trying to remember always to ask yourself why Shuho picked such and such a move to comment on and why he might have ignored another. This is, after all, a chance to melt the iceberg and see inside the mind of a player regarded universally as of Meijin stature – he never formally reached that grade because he was robbed by an early death. His importance as a theoretician was in stressing the relationship of joseki to fuseki, and he created many new josekis. His style, a mixture of subtlety and natural ease, is most often compared to Rin Kaiho of today’s players. Fujisawa Hideyuki considered Shuho his mentor.

His commentaries sparkle because he also broke new ground by touching on psychology and feelings during play. And, not just on the page, he had a gift for communication.

Still, the expectations of readers of his day are a little different from those of modern players, and so I have made a few cosmetic changes. One trivial one is to use A, B, C where he used symbols, but more significant is the use of in-line diagrams to allow readers to call up a pop-up diagram of the variation being discussed. Similarly, I have kept to his original diagram breaks, but the modern reader can choose to play through the game positions interactively. I think Shuho would have approved mightily of such innovations. But in that connection, note that I have chosen to lay out the book so that if you choose the format of viewing two columns at a time, you can (nearly) always view a diagram on the left and its text on the right, even though this adds some extra white space. Note also that I refer to letters in the text to cover the cases where Shuho used triangles, squares and circles. It is of course good practice to try to visualise the position thus described, but the inline diagrams will show the resulting position.

I have followed Shuho’s style as regards game headers (e.g. giving the result at the start – a common Japanese practice I normally dislike). But I have added western dates to his lunar dates.

I have retained his version of names (i.e. Murase Yakichi, and then Murase Shuho, for himself), but have altered his date and venue format since his method was to say, “same year”, “same venue”.

The reader should remember that all games are without komi. Also, as is common with old games, some game records are incomplete, and the moves given are the only ones known. Occasional discrepancies in records from other sources are mentioned, along with a few other points, in “Notes” blocks at the ends of games. Notes elsewhere are marked with [ ].

Finally, I have added an appendix of some handicap games played by Shuho, so that the reader can see how he himself practised what he preached.

London
January 2014

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBOOK 1

Preface to “New Ways in Go”

by Shigeno Yasutsugu [1]

When the Great Master Shuho [2] compiled a collection of games, he asked me about a title: “What about 'New Ways?” New refers to changing what is old.

Renewing daily [3] implies that there is never an end. Ever since go sages appeared there have been many go manuals. The theory they exemplify has changed with time; openings gradually change. When Sansa emerged, we had go of the Genna and Kanei eras [1615 ~ 1643]. When Dosaku appeared, we had go of the Genroku and Hoei eras [1688 ~ 1711]. When Jowa [4] appeared, we had go of the Bunsei and Tenpo eras [1818 ~ 1844]. The players who followed Jowa were Shuwa and Shusaku, and now we have reached Shuho. The more who appear, the more there is something new and so new manuals are created. If they are called New Ways [5] it is surely with justification.

If that is so, then are new methods always correct and old ways wrong? Are players of today skilful and players of the past clumsy? Not so, I say. If a player’s art has reached the ultimate level, then it is not possible to surpass it. But just because rain has fallen it does not mean the next day will be fine. Or, even if today is fine, tomorrow rain may fall. And people rejoice in the fact that there is no limit to what is new each day.

In other words, as Wei Bingshu [6] said, there are boundaries where no progress is possible and there are boundaries where change is possible. Please allow me to discuss go in terms of this theory. A player whose skill is extremely refined is known as a sage: he has reached the ultimate. Dosaku and Jowa were outstanding examples of go sages. Dosaku’s skill was of supreme excellence; Jowa’s was heroically profound. If we liken them to poets, then Dosaku resembled Li Bai. Jowa resembled Du Fu. If we liken them to men of letters, Dosaku is Su Dongpo and Jowa is Han Yu. Though they differed in temperament, in depth of knowledge they were the same. There are sages of former ages and sages of later ages, but the standard is the same. Surely it is not possible to distinguish between them.

It is so with go theory and openings. They change as they follow the ages and so appear to change their aspect. Here are the boundaries where change is possible. Since old ways have been in use for a long time, it is possible to assess their merits and demerits. Changing the demerits leaves the merits. But what is changed has further merits and demerits. Later, those who are proficient make further changes and so things are renewed. This is what we mean by renewal day by day, without end.

This is so not only in go. It applies to protocol, music, law and government. There is nothing which does not change so. Because of change, that which is filled overflows. Every generation must learn that this is so.

Shuho had Shuwa as his teacher and Shusaku as his elder fellow-pupil. The three “Shus” all had their fons et origo in Jowa. Twenty-odd years after he died [in 1847], there was a change of government and the Godokoro [7] was entirely abolished. Its venerable players passed away and their art was on the verge of disappearing.

It was then Shuho who gathered some friends and formed the Hoensha. Day and night they taught, they studied, they investigated, they discussed. When everyone later heard rumours of this, they came flocking to see. The Way of Go again flourished mightily.

A certain German person approached Shuho for tuition. He produced a go manual when he returned to his own country to spread the game there. This is how go was introduced to the West.

After the Edo Shogunate set up the Godokoro, many famous players emerged one after another. Their strength and the extent of their skill far exceeded China’s. They were supreme over all other countries. The book by Jowa called Viewing the Highlights of the National Art [8] is proof enough of that. But the person who par excellence introduced the game over the seas was Shuho.

Since the beginning of the Restoration of the Meiji Emperor, go, despite being a “small art” [9], has blossomed. When an impasse is reached fortune is needed and we have seen that. I wrote recently in a preface to the Hoensha’s monthly magazine that if our cultural accomplishments develop and the traditional arts are burnished, that will make our age illustrious and prosperous. A mere three or four years have elapsed since then and this has already been seen to be the case. Books on new methods are now appearing in great numbers and students now have whatever they need to acquire knowledge in depth. Sages will appear in due time. Any changes in go theory will be scrutinised, and this will go on and on without end. Having written that then, I feel now just like a Meijin who predicts the result of a game!

Shigeno Yasutsugu
Autumn, August 1882

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFour-stone openings\n 1 ~ 15

Four-stone opening 1 (1~58)

＞＜

Black 10, the hane at 12, and 14 are a good manoeuvre to attack the opponent while putting one’s own defences in place.

Black 28 is good.

Black 40, not responding directly to White 39, is a good way to attack.

Black 58 is the best move in this shape.

Note
Korschelt link: page 193. Just to confirm the point made in the introduction, Korschelt’s comments here are on moves 16, 39, 58.

Four-stone opening 2 (1~54)

＞＜

Black 8 occupies a dominant position in creating balance between left and right.

Black 10, leaving the corner even though White has played 9, is good when White has played 7.

White settles himself with 17 because Black is strong on both sides here.

Black 28 can also be played at A.

The sequence of the peep at Black 38 and then Black 40 is extremely good.

Black 46, keeping the White group on the left at a distance, and Black 48, capturing one stone, is a very good order of moves. In general, even though such moves that take away the opponent’s eyes are small, they pay dividends later.

Note
Korschelt link: page 193 (moves 10, 28, 40 commented)

Four-stone opening 3 (1~54)

＞＜

Black 18 and 20 are good in this case but Black 20 can also be played at 21.

Although White 27 is a bad move, it is a possible way to play when giving four stones.

Although White 47 is a bad move, too, it is played in order to see how Black might respond.

Note
Korschelt link: page 197 (moves 27, 30, 47 commented). As another example of the differences between the Shuho and Korschelt commentaries, and no doubt of the western preference for concreteness over the eastern willingness to accept ambiguity, Korschelt simply labels 27 as “particularly bad.” He partly twigs on with move 47, which he says is “false” but done in order to “confuse Black.” As you can see, Shuho’s intent was rather to teach Black how to think, rather than what to think.

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCommentaries

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCommentary 1

\n\n\n\n\n\n

White: Honinbo XIV Shuwa 8-dan (wins without counting)
Black: Murase Yakichi 5-dan
Handicap: -B-
Date: 7 December 1860 (Manen 1 X 25)
Place: Hirose’s house

Commentary 1 (1~100)
95: ko

＞＜

[No comments on first figure]

Commentary 1 (101~160)

＞＜

Invading White’s narrow space with Black 105 was an attempt to finish off the game quickly, but it turned into the reason for his defeat. If he had simply blocked at A, and slowly moved into the endgame, victory might not have eluded him.

Black 139 was similar. It allowed White a way to live. He should have played at 140 and then later if he makes the position safe by blocking at B, Black will still be some margin ahead.

What it boiled down to was that Black did not carefully consider the sizes of the respective territories at this stage, and thus the outcome, and relied too much on his own strength and got into a futile pushing contest. White, in contrast, from the beginning played a close opening and gradually occupied territory, so that in due course he was able suddenly to probe Black’s weaknesses and immediately take advantage of them to secure victory.

Note
Hirose refers to Hirose Kunishiro who was a 3-dan pupil of the Honinbo family, but also a go patron: he sponsored the match between Honinbo Shusaku and Shuho at his home.

End of sample commentary. The table of contents shows the scope of the full book.

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(c) 2014 John Fairbairn

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