Meijin

Yasunari Kawabata called the published in 1951 "Meijin" his best work. The basis of the book is a real event – a six-month-long "farewell game" of the great Meijin Hon'inbō Shūsai – a master of the game of go – against a promising young opponent. The course of the game is written by a journalist, who can be recognized as Kawabata himself, who indeed reported on the game for the newspaper "Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Shimbun." He observes how the venues of the game change, how each subsequent move takes more and more time, how the health of the elderly master begins to decline, how youth gradually takes precedence over experience, and how age-old traditions give way to scientific calculation and pragmatism. Translated from Japanese by Anna Slasheva, with scientific editing by Vadim Filippov, a master of sports in go, 4th dan of the Russian Go Federation, and Tatyana Zborovskaya, producer of Vadim Filippov's school.