LiteratureBook · 1951
The Master of Go
Yasunari Kawabata
Kawabata covered the 1938 match between the master Honinbo Shusai and the challenger Minoru Kitani as a newspaper reporter, then rebuilt it as fiction. Shusai loses and dies soon after, and the book reads that defeat as an older Japanese order giving way to science and regulation. Kawabata regarded it as his finest work.
Why you should read this
Yasunari Kawabata's novel dramatizes a real 1938 Go championship match he covered as a newspaper reporter, using the board game as a lens on the clash between traditional and modern Japanese values. Best for readers patient with a slow, ritualized pace rather than conventional narrative momentum.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Fiction
- Published
- 1951
- Themes
- Japanese LiteratureLiterature
