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© 2022 Richard Hunter

The Road to Understanding Japanese Volume 1

After JEJ3

Richard Hunter

Buy the full book at gobooks.com

This book is aimed at readers who have worked through Just Enough Japanese volume 3 (JEJ3) or have otherwise achieved a good grasp of basic Japanese grammar. It bridges the gap between JEJ3 and volume 2 of this series (RUJ2), which was published in 2021.

If you bought RUJ2 without reading JEJ3, then I recommend that you get RUJ1 as the starting point of this series. I may add content to RUJ2 in the future and I will assume that readers have read RUJ1.

Why did RUJ2 come out first? At that time, I chose to write about my ongoing studies because writing the text and being able to see the diagrams helps me to learn the Japanese. It is useful to have RUJ2 on my iPad so that I can revisit it if I encounter familiar-looking words that I have not fully learned.

This book consists of three sections. Section One reviews and demystifies the basics via a highly recommended course on YouTube. Section Two discusses freely accessible go problems focusing on the text. Section Three discusses the different texts in different books presenting the same problem.

Volumes in this Series

Volume 1: Published in 2022

Volume 2: Published in 2021

Volume 3: Planned for sometime in the future

Copyright Page

© 2022 Richard Hunter

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

Photograph of Richard Hunter by Louise Bremner.

Table of Contents

The Road to Understanding Japanese Volume 1

Copyright Page

Introduction

SECTION ONE: GRAMMAR REVIEW

1–1: Japanese Sentence Structure

1–2: Recommended YouTube Japanese Course

SECTION TWO: ONLINE BOOK PREVIEWS

2–1: Japanese Go Book Previews

2–2: Selected Amazon Previews

2–2s: Summary of Chapter 2–2

SECTION THREE: SAME PROBLEM, DIFFERENT TEXT

3–1: Introduction

3–2: The Problem

3–3: The Texts

APPENDICES

Appendix 1: Advice

Appendix 2: External Resources

About the Author

Buy This Book

About Go Books

Introduction

I bought my first Japanese go book in the London Go Centre (LGC) in the mid 1970s [1]. That was the original LGC near Belsize Park, which opened in 1975 and closed in 1978.

“Why would anyone buy books in a language they don’t understand?” A good question. And one that I was asked by my brother (the one that never played go). The answer is that you can get enough out of a book just by looking at the diagrams to make it worth buying. Many players have bought Japanese go books without being bothered at all by the language being totally or mostly incomprehensible.

In the mid 70s, there were few go books in English. My club at that time (Oxford University Go Club) had some in its library, and I had some myself. The main publisher of go books, Ishi Press, had been going for only a few years and they had published only a few titles. People at the LGC eagerly awaited the arrival of the next 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.

Several translation guides have appeared in the pages of the British Go Journal over the years. The first was in 1970 ⤴, which was before I started playing go. It was aimed specifically at helping players read the tsumego problem books written by Maeda Nobuaki, whose nickname was ‘the god of tsumego’. I still have my three volume set. It went through many reprints, but was out of print until recently when it was reissued as a revised two-volume set.

One book that I bought in the LGC, which I still have in my possession, came with a translation guide on a single piece of paper. That was the Tesuji Dictionary by Segoe Kensaku and Go Seigen, a real classic that is still popular today. The guide explained the chapter headers, which were the names of some tesuji such as tsuke, kosumi, and tobi. It also explained the colours (Black to play) and the correct, reference, and variation diagrams.

For more complete definitions, it pointed you to the International Handbook and Dictionary (Ishi Press G4, 1970) by John Tilley (with German translations by Horst Mueller), which I did buy later on.

Strangely, the Tesuji Dictionary’s translation guide omits the Japanese for failure diagram. The book has very few diagrams labeled failure, but it does have some (e.g. volume 1 page 98). In modern problem books, on the other hand, the answer diagrams are predominantly labelled correct or failure, with reference and variation diagrams appearing less often along with a few other types of diagrams.

You learn from 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 colours 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. I wrote a free translation guide on Sensei’s Library ⤴. As a more leisurely introduction to the Japanese used in go books, I wrote Just Enough Japanese volume 1.

There are many Japanese go books in homes in the UK, and I suspect the same is true of other countries such as the USA. People bought them in the LGC, and visitors to Japan took many back home with them. Some people bought new books in the Nihon Kiin or expensive books in the famous specialist book store in Jinbocho. When I was living in Japan, I bought lots of cheap go books in ordinary second-hand bookshops and sold many extra copies to visitors. There was a well-stocked second-hand bookshop near my local station and several others within convenient reach.

If you do not have any Japanese books yourself and are curious to see some examples, the simplest way is to look at book previews on Amazon. Section 2 in this book discusses online previews. I selected five particular previews on Amazon, and I present some examples of the problems and answers with diagrams and the full Japanese text. I also discuss other points of interest in the Japanese text.

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, well made, and well laid out. They contain useful information beyond what is available in English. The best books to read are books of problems on tsumego, life and death, tesuji, and semeai. You can get a lot out of those. A few have been translated into English and some English go books have been compiled from Japanese sources. However, my library of Japanese books has lots of problems that have never appeared in English.

Many of my old Japanese books, which were out of print for a long time and only obtainable in second-hand stores in Japan, are now available online, often as electronic reprints.

Reference

[1] Some of this Introduction was adapted from content published in the British Go Journal issue 191 (BGJ191).

About the Author

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. He received a UK 4 dan certificate in 1991 but currently plays as 3 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 go books.