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Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, Vermont 05759 U.S.A.
Copyright © 2009 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kishikawa, Shigemi.
Go fundamentals / by Shigemi Kishikawa.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-4-8053-1070-0 (pbk.)
1. Go (Game) I. Title.
GV1459.5.K56 2009
794’.4--dc22
2009013580
ISBN 978-1-4629-0262-0
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Contents
Chapter 1 Equipment
Chapter 2 The Game
Chapter 3 Territory
Chapter 4 Connection and Disconnection
Chapter 5 Capture
Chapter 6 Life and Death
Chapter 7 Illegal Plays
Chapter 8 Seki Situation
Chapter 9 Ko Situation
Chapter 10 Basic Tactics
Chapter 11 Playing the Game
Foreword
The first substantive knowledge of the Chinese game of go in the in the western world dates from 1687, when the young Chinese scholar Shen Fuzong explained the game to Thomas Hyde at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. Shen, brought to Europe by a Jesuit missionary, had already been paraded at the Versailles court where the Sun King Louis requested a demonstration of chopsticks—but on gold plates, naturally.
Although Hyde was alert to the merits of the game and wrote about it, he clearly had only a fuzzy grasp of it, and go caught on in Europe no more than did chopsticks.
It was not until the self-imposed isolation of Japan was breached by Commodore Perry’s “black ships” in the mid 19th century and westerners began flocking there that its devotees learned enough to play an actual game and to teach others. Go had reached Japan from China over a thousand years before, and had been developed into its “national game.” A tiny handful of westerners even became tolerably proficient. The most notable was the chemist Oskar Korschelt, who studied at the school of the top player, Honinbo Shuho. He got to within a six-stone handicap of Shuho. On his return to Germany, Korschelt, who found “exceptional pleasure” in studying Shuho’s openings, shared his delight on the game with his 1884 work Das “Go”-Spiel. In itself, this was probably the single most important work that introduced the game to the west, but it had added importance in that it was heavily used by Arthur Smith for his Game of Go. This latter work had the advantage of being in English and published (by Tuttle, be it noted) in the large market of America.
Smith’s book was the one I learned from, also with exceptional pleasure. It is still a worthy book, but dated. It is not just that the references to players and openings
