Quotes from book
The Master of Go

Name: The Master of Go
Author: Yasunari Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata Original title 呉清源棋談・名人 (Japanese, 1951)

The Master of Go is a novel by the Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. The novel was first published in serial form in 1951. Titled Meijin in its original Japanese, Kawabata considered it his finest work, although it is in contrast with his other works. It is the only one of Kawabata's novels that the author considered to be finished.

“Maybe vagueness has been good for me. The word means two different things in Tokyo and Osaka, you know. In Tokyo it means stupidity, but in Osaka they talk about vagueness in a painting and in a game of Go.”

Yasunari Kawabata book The Master of Go

Source: The Master of Go (1951), Ch. 18, p. 76.

“From the way of Go, the beauty of Japan and the Orient had fled. Everything had become science and regulation. The road to advancement in rank, which controlled the life of a player, had become a meticulous point system. One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and the fragrance of Go as an art.”

Yasunari Kawabata book The Master of Go

Source: The Master of Go (1951), Ch. 12, p. 52.

“That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music.”

Yasunari Kawabata book The Master of Go

Source: The Master of Go (1951), Ch. 38, p. 164.
Context: That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary.