© 2015 Richard Hunter

Just Enough Japanese

Volume One:
Basic Level Practical Japanese for
Go Players

Richard Hunter

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This EPUB includes problem diagrams. If your EPUB reader supports interactivity, you can tap on the diagram to verify that you found the right solution. To get a hint, tap on the status box in the top right of the problem.

To make sure the solution diagram of a problem is hidden, switch to a view that shows one page at a time (e.g. portrait layout).

To read and enjoy go material written in Japanese, you only need to learn a very small number of kanji (Chinese characters). Of course, that number will not let you understand every word of a discussion book. But most go problems and game records use standard titles, headers, and diagram captions containing a limited set of kanji.

This book introduces the most relevant kanji, one small step at a time, building from ground level up to a basic practical level. It is suitable for readers with no knowledge of Japanese at all, as well as for readers who already know some Japanese. Key vocabulary is introduced, and then practiced through go problems and game records.

Finally, it discusses some Amazon samples (previews) that are freely available online, which enables you to see the same material as me.

2023–12 Update

I have gone through this book and updated it with extra material and also edited various parts. Following some good feedback on ‘Life in 19 x 19’, I decided to remove references to the school years in which kanji are taught to Japanese children. These are not important for go players. They are usually given in dictionary apps and online websites if you are interested.

Copyright Page

© 2015 Richard Hunter

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

Photograph of Richard Hunter by Louise Bremner.

Thanks to Harry Fearnley for suggestions and corrections.

Table of Contents

Just Enough Japanese

Copyright Page

Introduction

SECTION ONE: GETTING STARTED

Chapter 1: Black and White

The chapters in gray are included only in the full book.

SECTION TWO: GO PROBLEMS

Chapter 2: Right and Wrong

Chapter 3: Black to Play

Chapter 4: Black to Kill

SECTION THREE: GO GAMES

Chapter 5: Colors and Handicaps

Chapter 6: Results

SECTION FOUR: EXAMPLES

Chapter 7: Examples of Go Problems

Chapter 8: Examples of Go Games

Chapter 9: Examples of Go Books

Appendix 1: Vocabulary

Appendix 2: External Resources

Appendix 3: Index of Problems

Appendix 4: Just Enough Japanese: The Series

About the Author

Buy This Book

About Go Books

Introduction

This book provides a gentle introduction to reading go material written in Japanese, such as printed books and online web pages of both go problems and game records. It starts at the complete beginner level, for people with no knowledge at all of Japanese. Readers who already have some knowledge can either treat the early sections as review, or skip ahead to the chapter summary. I hope it will encourage you to delve deeper into the Japanese language, and continue studying by yourself.

I bought my first Japanese go book in the London Go Centre in the mid 1970s. That was the original LGC near Belsize Park, which opened in 1975 and closed in 1978. At that time, there were few go books in English. People at the LGC eagerly awaited the arrival of each new publication. In the meantime, to fill the gap, they bought imported Japanese books. You could browse through ones for sale on the bookshelves of the LGC’s shop. Before the arrival of personal computers and electronic game files, the main way to access professional games was to buy Kido Yearbooks. How the times have changed.

Many players have bought Japanese go books without being bothered at all by the language being totally or mostly incomprehensible. You can read and enjoy Japanese go books with no knowledge at all of Japanese. But knowing even a small amount is a big help because most problem books use a standard format. If you recognize the colors Black and White (which side is to play in a problem) and the diagram labels correct and failure, then you have taken a giant step forward.

There are plenty of Japanese word lists available in magazines and books, as well as on websites. Indeed, I wrote several of them. However, I think the hardest step is the first one—getting started. A long list of foreign words is daunting. This book aims to ease you across this first barrier. Later, you can certainly explore, and utilize, other resources.

Why would you want to read Japanese go books nowadays when there are so many English go books? I think Japanese ones are well written and well laid out and contain useful information beyond what is available in English.

The most popular Japanese go books that go players read are books of problems. Books of games are also easy to use, though you might have trouble reading the players' names. Go problems and game records in Japanese can also be found online. Therefore, this book covers these two main topics.

You can learn a lot from Japanese go books, even if you have zero knowledge of Japanese. Assuming you are already a go player, the diagrams alone are almost self explanatory to a certain degree. Since I already have some knowledge of Japanese, I tested this hypothesis by picking up a Korean go book. I do not know a single word of Korean. Nevertheless, I could study and enjoy the problems. I guessed that the first problem was ‘Black to play’ and the answers made it clear that this was true. From that, I could decipher the Korean for ‘Black to play’ and recognize it in later problems. The book—a magazine supplement—was so similar to many of my Japanese ones, in style and layout, that it looked like an exact copy with just the text replaced.

The more Japanese you understand, the more you will get out of your books.

This book introduces Japanese from the viewpoint of its usefulness to go players. As such, it takes a completely different approach to other Japanese text books. Phrase books introduce Japanese that is useful for visitors to Japan, but not really useful for go players. Language textbooks aim to teach the whole language. They mostly start with simple vocabulary and grammar and teach the phonetic writing scripts hiragana and katakana well in advance of kanji (Chinese characters). The vocabulary that is typically introduced is mostly irrelevant for go players. And the grammar for sentences is unnecessary at the basic level of practical Japanese for go players. You will not be learning any grammar or reading sentences in this first volume. You will be learning just the key vocabulary that appears in headers and captions.

The kanji for go, the game, is a rather difficult one, so I am not going to cover it in this volume. However, for reference, and recognition, it is 碁.

Large Kanji

This book contains large kanji in gray boxes. If you encounter any problems with them, these steps should fix them.

Issue 1: Gray box is empty.
Fix: Update to SmartGo One. The basic app is free. The more recent versions of the GoBooks app on iOS or macOS should still work, but GoBooks is no longer being updated or supported. See About Go Books.

Issue 2: With iOS 10 and macOS Sierra some kanji looked slightly odd. E.g. 六 had a slanted line above the horizonal line.
Cause: System was using a Chinese font.
Fix: Add Japanese.
On iOS: Settings > General > Language & Region > Add Language > Japanese.
You can remove Japanese any time you want via Settings > General > Language & Region > Edit.
On the Mac: System Preferences > Language & Region > + > Japanese.

PART ONE: GETTING STARTED

Chapter 1: Black and White

The most frequently occurring terms in written go materials are the colors of the stones: black and white. So, these are the first words to learn.

If you have a book of the Games of Go Seigen, for example, the most useful information is which color he is playing in the game.

For a book of go problems, the most useful information is whether the problem is ‘Black to play’ or ‘White to play’. You could read out the moves for both cases like a status problem, but many problems are designed to illustrate a particular technique, so they specify the side to play. So let us look at the Japanese for these two colors.

Go Problems

Typical Book Problem

Here is a typical page from a Japanese book of go problems. When you encounter such a problem for the first time, the words in the header, caption, and accompanying text are completely incomprehensible. However, by focusing on only the key kanji, you can easily extract valuable information.

Problem 1: xxxxx xx xx

Here is the same position converted to a Go Books diagram. (Go Books was previously called SmartGo Books)

Focus on the Color to Play

Here is the same page with irrelevant information hidden, leaving only the problem number and the color of the side to play. In modern books, the problem numbers are usually written in the familiar Arabic numerals that we use in English, rather than in Japanese kanji, so they are easy to understand. This is the first problem in the book, so it is Problem 1. The color is what you are going to learn first.

黒

This is the Japanese for ‘black’. It is a Chinese character (kanji) that is read/pronounced kuro, which comprises two syllables: ku-ro (represented phonetically in hiragana by くろ). Most kanji are read (pronounced) in different ways depending on the meaning and usage, which is usually clear from what follows (or precedes) them. When I say that 黒 is read kuro, what I mean is that it is read kuro in the particular context that we are interested in.

(If the Japanese character above doesn’t appear extra large, please update to the newest version of Go Books.)

▹ 黒 kuro black

You do not need to be able to write 黒. You only need to be able to recognize it. In fact, you really only need to be able to distinguish the kanji for black from the kanji for white, because they nearly always appear where the context is one or the other. 黒 is the most common kanji in Japanese go books as you can imagine from knowing how often the word black occurs in English go books.

Stroke Order and Pronunciation

Tapping on the blue kanji below will take you to an external website (JLearn.net).

External Link 1: ⤴ 黒

I chose to link to this site because the media player does not require Adobe Flash and the site provides pronunciations as well as nice animations showing the correct order in which the kanji is written, and other information about the kanji.

On the left is the kanji. Below the kanji are keys for playing the animation. Below that is the JLPT grade, which is explained in a link that I provide in the Appendix.

On the right, you see the English meaning ‘black’.

Below that are the KUN and ON readings. The first entry is くろ kuro. Ignore the other readings.
Below that ‘Written with’ shows the number of strokes used to write the kanji. The kanji animation on the left also numbers the strokes as they appear.
Below that ‘Taught in’ shows the school grade that the kanji is taught to Japanese children. That is irrelevant to you. I give an external link to the Wikipedia page on school grades in the Appendix.
Below that is ‘Radicals’. I discuss radicals below in the section Additional Details and also later on in this book.

Below the kanji is the header ‘Example words’.
The first one is 黒 くろ kuro. The loudspeaker icon will play the spoken sound (using a synthesized voice).

The word 黒 is a noun. Its first meaning is ‘black’. The second listed meaning is ‘black go stone’. Not mentioned is the fact that 黒 also means the person known as Black, who is the player with the black stones, just as in English.

External Link 2: ⤴ 黒

This website (jisho.org) is the one I use when I am working on my desktop computer. It was significantly updated after the original release of this book, and as a result I now prefer it to JLearn. However, it does not seem to provide audio for kanji and words. JLearn does provide audio and so do the Apple dictionary apps that I use.

If you click on the blue underlined word ‘Links’ on the left, the third dropdown option is ‘Kanji details for 黒’. You can get to the same page by clicking on the kanji 黒 on the right under the heading ‘Kanji’. A bit indirect, but I could not link directly to that page.

Other kanji links in this book are all to JLearn, mainly because it provides the audio. If you want to see them in Jisho or elsewhere, the appendix gives vocabulary lists designed for easy copying and pasting into websites and apps. I do all of my studying in apps on my iPad. Websites are accessible to people using different operating systems, so they are easier to discuss. See Appendix 2.

Links to External Websites

Link to External Website 1: ⤴ 黒

Link to External Website 2: ⤴ 黒

Additional Details

Here is some additional information about 黒 that may help you to learn and remember it.

The traditional way to look up a kanji in a paper dictionary is to break it down into components and count the number of strokes required to write it. The primary component of a kanji is called its radical. 黒 is rare in that it is a radical itself. That is, this entire kanji is an elemental building block for other kanji, which mostly have related meanings.

As a memory aid, you can think of 黒 as being composed of two parts (also called components and elements): the top component ⾥ means ‘village’, and the bottom component ⺣ means ‘fire’. Think of ⺣ as the flames of an open fire under a fire-blackened cooking pot in the village square.

Modern computer software greatly eases the process of looking up unknown kanji and also studying Japanese. With electronic documents, you may be able to copy and paste kanji into a search box. There are plug-ins and extensions for web browsers that provide pop-up boxes containing dictionary entries. Dictionary apps offer lookup by various methods including multi-radical lookup and handwriting lookup. My iPad OS and macOS both let me select a word in many texts and apps and choose ‘Look Up’ in the long-press pop-up menu.

Is that kuro or kuroi?

Some people who already know a little Japanese might be puzzled because they learned black as kuroi, rather than kuro. It is true that kuroi does mean black. The spelling depends on the grammatical usage.

黒 is the stem. By itself, it acts as a noun. The final i of kuroi is an inflection, which is written in hiragana.

黒い is the adjective form, as in ‘a black cat’.

This is another good reason for learning kanji early, rather than following the traditional route of delaying learning kanji and writing Japanese in either rōmaji (Roman letters) or hiragana. The kanji stem shows the meaning and clearly exposes the inflection.

Problem 1: xxxxx 黒x xx

Here is our diagram again. Now 黒 stands out from the jumble of meaningless squiggles. I noticed the same effect in Japan whenever I learned a new kanji; suddenly I would see it everywhere—on street signs, in books, on TV, ….

Problem 1

xxxxx 黒x xx

Most Japanese books put the color to play in the Problem header, but sometimes it appears at the beginning, or end, of the text, set apart for emphasis. The location is not important; just look for 黒. Here, I have converted the layout to the usual Go Books style with the color to play in the diagram caption.

白

白 shiro means ‘white’. It is also a radical itself, though that is not the case for the majority of kanji.

⤴ 白 shiro white

It is easy to distinguish 黒 from 白, which is what you need to do in the context of a go problem page. 黒 is densely packed with black lines (11 strokes) while 白 (5 strokes) has more open white space inside; 白 has a small slanted line above the top horizontal while 黒 has four small lines below the bottom horizontal.

A go problem will probably have either 黒 or 白 in the caption. A modern go game will probably have both at the beginning.

Game Records

The kanji 黒 and 白 are used in game records, where they provide key information about the colors of the stones used by the players in the game.

Go Books offers several multilingual books in English together with Dutch, French, German, Spanish, and also Japanese. At the time of writing, there is only one book in Japanese: Patterns of the Sanrensei by Michael Redmond 9 dan. It does not contain any go problems, but it does have game records. The free sample, which you can find in the app’s Store tab, includes one game record. Toggle the language setting to Japanese and look at the cover page. Michael Redmond’s name is easy to recognize because it is written in katakana rather than kanji, and it is much longer than most Japanese names.
Michael Redmond
マイケル・レドモンド

Game 1 in ‘Section 3: Go Games’ is a game that Redmond played when he was 5 dan. The game information includes key information about the players: their names, grades, and the colors they hold. Numbers and grades will be covered in Just Enough Japanese volume 2 (JEJ2).

Example of Game Information

白: Ｍ・レドモンド　XX
黒: XX XX　XX

It is easy to see that White is M. Redmond.

Examples of Go Problems

1 xxxxx 黒x xx

＞＜ ▶︎

黒 kuro black

I have made this diagram into a Go Books Problem, so there is a black stone icon above the diagram. Some Japanese printed books, especially recent ones, show similar stone icons indicating the color to play, in addition to having the words in the text.

Problem 2

Problem 2: 白x xx

＞＜ ▶︎

白 shiro white

Summary of this Chapter

In this chapter, you learned two important kanji. They are the top two kanji in terms of frequency of appearance in go books.

黒 kuro black

白 shiro white

The appendix gives vocabulary lists designed for easy copying and pasting into websites and apps.

Appendix 4: Just Enough Japanese: The Series

The series Just Enough Japanese (JEJ) consists of three volumes. For more information, follow the link below to book series on the SmartGo website:

⤴ Just Enough Japanese

About the Author

Richard Hunter

Richard Hunter is a British go player currently living in the UK. He lived in Tokyo, Japan, from 1980 to 2008. He was introduced to the game by his elder brother, Derek (then British Go Association Secretary), and began playing at Birmingham University Go Club and then at Oxford University, where he served as club secretary and president. He attended the opening of the London Go Centre, where he met Iwamoto Kaoru 9 dan and Magari Reiki 9 dan and later lost a 9 stone game to Magari in Bristol. Hunter was a member of the BGA council in 1978.

Hunter’s relocation to Tokyo allowed him to take lessons from Iwamoto and some of his disciples, and he eventually managed to get to four stones against Iwamoto and three stones against Magari. He was a regular contributor to the British Go Journal from 1991 to 2006, while living in Japan, and restarted contributing in 2020.

He received a UK 4 dan certificate in 1991, but currently plays as 1 dan. He regularly plays in British tournaments and has in the past played in several European Go Congresses, most recently Dublin 2001, and one US Go Congress (Washington DC, 1994).

While in Japan, Hunter enjoyed browsing through second-hand book stores in Tokyo looking for old Japanese go books.

For the past several years, he has been actively studying Japanese and writing about it to help other go players do the same.