In my experience, go is a kind of test: it can uncover a person’s hitherto untapped abilities. There is a grim difference if it’s compared with other forms of chess. Chinese chess, for instance, is a more involving game that requires a greater number of pieces, but go is more complicated, more mysterious – sublime. There is no particular property for each stone in go; they can all perform the same function. They can be a general or a soldier – it all depends on where you place them and how you move them. Everything depends upon the player’s knowledge and skill, or lack thereof. Chinese chess is different – chariot, cannon, horse, all have their unique qualities: the chariot can move orthogonally, but it can’t leap over intervening pieces; the cannon can capture opposing pieces, but only by leaping over them; the horse moves orthogonally and then diagonally, but it cannot jump; the elephant moves two points diagonally to capture its opponent, and it, too, cannot jump; the soldier must advance straight towards the river, but once past it, can move diagonally to capture an opponent – but there is no retreat for the soldier. These differences, which are really limitations, mean that playing Chinese chess is comparatively easy, and not particularly profound. But the situation in go is entirely different. You could say that for Chinese chess there is a limit concerning the skill and intelligence involved, and that the opposite is true for go: the nature of its challenge is limitless. No stone has a particular property; its power comes from its placement on the board, and, in certain places, that power can be exceptional. Consequently, go requires you to have a special ability to combine things – to structure things to your advantage. You must provide the stones with the place at which they can be most effective; you must strive to connect them, to link them all together, and the connections must grow – only by growing can they survive. But this combinatorial style is also without limit: there is no set form, or rather, the form is formless. This limitlessness is sublime, alluring, imaginative – it is almost an intelligence. Victory or defeat does not depend on crafty tricks or random chance: the game is an intense battle of wits and insight, it’s a contest, a challenge. The game strengthens one’s character. The laurels of victory rest upon wisdom and intelligence, a resoluteness of character. For those who have a talent for the game, their powers of imagination, of perception, patience and technique are similar to those of mathematicians, poets and composers; the only difference is in how they combine these skills to create. The amazing ability that Father demonstrated in playing go, the unfathomable manner by which he achieved victory, as well as his obvious disdain for social niceties, his arrogant pride, aloofness, eccentricity and unwillingness to lose were not only puzzling to us, but to all those opponents who came one after another. They also couldn’t seem to grasp what he was all about; how he was able to win game after game.