their stones one by one on the intersections, or the ends of the lines. Stones can be
placed anywhere; black goes first, by custom. There is really only one rule:a
stone must have at least one ‘breathing space’ or liberty (jiyu) to ‘live’.”

“What does that mean? Barry,” I queried.

“When you put a stone on an intersection, there are four lines leading from it
to the next four intersections. It has four jiyu. If a stone is on an intersection on a
side, then there are only three lines leading from it to three adjacent intersections.
It has three jiyu. If a stone is on a corner intersection, there are only two lines
leading from it to two adjacent intersections. It has two jiyu.”

“So how do you play?”

“The objective in Go is to control territory, or ‘ji’. If my black stone is
surrounded by your white stones on the intersections adjacent to it, my black stone
‘dies’ and you remove it. You keep it in a pile with other captured black stones. I
can’t put another black stone on the now vacant intersection, because it would also
die, but you could put a white stone there because it would be connected to your
other white stones which have ‘jiyu’ (liberty). You could have fifty stones all
connected to only one ‘jiyu’. That would be okay. But of course if I could put one
of my black stones on their ‘jiyu’, all fifty white stones would die and their
territory would become my ‘ji’.

“Well, that sounds simple enough to me,” I said. “Even I can do that. Let’s
play.”

“It is very simple, Morley, but like life itself, Go soon gets very complicated.
And remember, it’s customary to say ‘Atari’ (success) when you are about to take
your opponent’s stone or stones.”

Barry and I had played quite a few games, but not so many, of course, as
some Japanese whom I learned devote their entire lives to its pursuit. I liked the
simplicity of Go with its one rule to remember and its complexity blossoming from
that one condition. I had been doing quite well, so far as I had gone:

Now, Nakeno-san is about to give me a whuppin:Good thing there’s no
money riding on this.

The Go-Ban has nine spots, one in the centre, four that are six intersections
from it, and four at the corners, six intersections from those. These are ‘okigo’, the

page:

26

Japanby Morley Evans

November 21, 2000