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Wonders of Life & Death

Honinbo Shusai’s tsumego classic
Shikatsu Myoki

Presented by

John Fairbairn

From the GoGoD Archives
(GoGoD site).

Buy the full book at gobooks.com

Description

The full 1910 edition of Honinbo Shusai’s minor tsumego classic Shikatsu Myoki, with an introduction by the editor. It includes 120 problems (with solutions), most original and many taxing and ingenious.

The book is famous partly because it was one of the first attempts by newspapers to present go for a popular audience.

About the Author

Honinbo Shusai (1874 ~ 1940) became one of the first apprentices of the Hoensha in 1884, but after reaching 2-dan in 1891 he quit the go world to try to make money in other ways, including setting up a missing persons' bureau. He wandered penniless for some time before putting up at a temple where, in return for free lodgings, he gave go tuition. That rekindled his desire to be a go professional and so he set up a go salon in Tokyo. At first he stayed with the Hoensha but after some shady business he transferred to the school of Honinbo Shuei, who gave him a 4-dan diploma in 1892.

Between 1895 and 1907 he played a series of successful ten-game matches with his main rival, Ishii Senji, rising by 1905 to 7-dan.

On Shuei’s death in 1907 there was a dispute over his successor but eventually Shusai became the 21st Honinbo in 1908. Thereafter he was the central figure in the go world, and became Meijin by acclamation in 1917. He became known as the Invincible Meijin because he was willing to play rather than retire, as had been the case with previous Meijins, and he was very successful in these games, many of which have become celebrated in go history.

About the Editor

Writer and translator John Fairbairn is one of the partnership with the late T Mark Hall that jointly produced the GoGoD (Games of Go on Disc) database and go encyclopaedia, now continued as Games of Go on Download (database only).

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

Text (c) by John Fairbairn

Cover design (c) by Alison Fairbairn

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

Contents

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

Introduction

Original preface

Problems

Problems 1 ~ 10

Problems 11 ~ 20

Problems 21 ~ 30

Problems 31 ~ 40

Problems 41 ~ 50

Problems 51 ~ 60

Problems 61 ~ 70

Problems 71 ~ 80

Problems 81 ~ 90

Problems 91 ~ 100

Problems 101 ~ 110

Problems 111 ~ 120

Appendix: Books by John Fairbairn

Cover

Book description

About the author

Buy This Book

About SmartGo Books

Introduction

Honinbo Shusai 本因坊秀哉 (1874~1940) was the top player in the world for most of the first half of the 20th century. In particular, he was seen, in terms of strength, as the natural successor to his teacher, Honinbo Shuei, who died in 1907.

Shusai in 1916

The succession did not happen without debate or even acrimony. Shusai had a strong rival in Karigane Junichi, a rivalry which reverberated over the next couple of decades.

Apart from that, Shusai was involved in momentous games such as the challenges from the young stars of the New Fuseki age, Go Seigen then Kitani Minoru.

These episodes, with an account of Shusai’s life, have already been described in considerable detail in several of my paper books published by Slate & Shell. Details are given in the Appendix, but see in particular:

* The Insha Game: Honinbo Shusai versus Karigane Junichi

* The Old versus New Fuseki Game: Honinbo Shusai versus Go Seigen

* The Meijin’s Retirement Game: Honinbo Shusai versus Kitani Minoru

But before these games, Shusai was at the forefront of the first attempts to establish a newspaper audience for go. In 1910, he was not yet Meijin (he was recommended for the title in 1914, but political events delayed his accession until 1917), but being head of the Honinbo family was then tantamount to the same thing.

The Jiji Shinpo newspaper therefore chose him as the figurehead for their first attempts at the popularisation of go. These included game commentaries, of course, but also problems for readers to solve. Prizes were offered. The prizes would often have been well earned, since there was no dumbing down in those days, and indeed the problems, though of uneven standard, were considered to have enough merit to warrant being published as a separate book. This was the now famous collection usually known just as Shikatsu Myoki (Wonders of Life & Death), although the full title had the slightly fibby prefix Shin’an Tsumego or “New go problems”.

This is the book presented here, containing 120 problems. Apart from the preface, the original had virtually no text beyond labels such as “Black to play”. But there was more art in the book than might appear even at a tenth glance. The original preface (see below) explains some of this. Remember that this was a time when ways of presenting go were in their infancy. Many innovative solutions were tried. Some worked; some failed. That might seem just a boring historical footnote, but it does add a certain charming counterpoint in that you are now reading one of the first e-books for go, where innovative ways for easing the reading process are still being pursued.

A translation of the original text to Shusai’s work, as it appeared in January 1910 (when he was still 8-dan), is given below, for historical interest. Obviously this preface is hardly relevant to the present e-book, and to make sense of the comments you perhaps also need to know that the book was presented in the form of one or two problems presented on a full-diagram board, with the solutions not given in diagrams but as a list of coordinates above the problem diagram (e.g., in our terms, White 1 q17, Black 2 q16, White 3 p16, and so on). However, quite a number of the harder problems also merited a follow-up diagram to illustrate a variation or two. In these cases, the position was repeated in the new diagram with stones added up to the branching point, and the subsequent moves were again given in a coordinates list above the new diagram. That is, there was no numbering on any of the diagrams anywhere. Which meant at least that the solution was close-by but possibly not clear enough to act as a spoiler.

While modernising the format, I have tried to present the book more or less as an original Japanese reader would have experienced it. The most obvious change is that obvious misprints have been corrected. Also, Shusai (or his editor) made liberal use of the exclamation myo 妙 (‘wonderful’, as in the title) for especially good moves. I have decided to follow chess practice and render this as “Black 1!!” etc. I don’t think these markings serve much purpose, except perhaps sometimes to confirm that a particularly eye-popping move is not a misprint, but on a few occasions I have also added a variation or so, or a comment. On the whole I think it needs to be remembered that these problems were originally meant as a means of a newspaper reader whiling away the time over a single problem a day, and he (and so that means you) could reasonably be expected to mull over some of the variations for himself. Since there was no text, except for these markings and minimal headings, in the original, you can assume that any other text is mine.

I said above that there was a slight element of fibbing in the title. Problem 57, for example, was far from new. It is a copy, stone for stone, from the problem “Eight princes galloping on horseback” from the Chinese classic Xuanxuan Qijing (Gateway to All Marvels) of 1347. Admittedly, this would have then been unknown to any but a tiny handful of people – the first widely available version of the classic was still some time away. There are other problems where it is easy to see they have been adapated from old classics, but I have not bothered to mention those. In the end, it doesn’t really matter who composed the problems. It is the working of their “wonders” that will continue to amaze and delight, even in our sated electronic age.

John Fairbairn
London
March 2014

THE PROBLEMS

Problem 1

White to live

Solution 1

White lives

White 1, 5 and 9!!

Variation

Variation for Black 6

Problem 2

White to play and kill

Solution 2

White kills

White 1 and 7!!

Care is needed to avoid a seki.

Variation

Variation for Black 4
15: throws in

Problem 3

Black to play and live

Solution 3

Black lives…
10 at 6

Black 1 and 5!!

Continuation

Variation

Variation for White 2

Modern editions generally reverse the variations and make this the main line.

It is clearly better for White, and apart from the two-stone capture, he can also get a seki.

Problem 4

Black to play and get a ko

Solution 4

Ko

Black 5!!

Variation

Variation for White 4

Problem 5

Black to play and win the capturing race

Solution 5

Black wins…

Continuation
18: connects

Variation

Variation for previous White 6

Shusai did not give this variation – perhaps it is too obvious but do note the outlying stone is useful.

Problem 6

White to play and kill with ko

Solution 6

Ko
8: ko

White 1!!

Continuation…

Continuation