Go in Japan: the game and its institutions

Go is usually played on a board with nineteen lines in each direction. Their crossings make 361 points. Black plays first, then the players alternate, placing one stone on an empty intersection each turn. A stone does not move across the board after placement. Players keep their stones in bowls; nine-line and thirteen-line boards make useful smaller games for learning.

The empty points immediately above, below or beside a stone are its liberties. Stones of the same colour joined along a line share liberties; a diagonal touch does not connect them. A move that leaves your own group with no liberties, without capturing an opposing group in the same move, is illegal under Japanese rules. A group loses its place on the board when the opponent fills its last liberty. In the paired drawing, Black takes the circled point and the white stone in the middle is removed.

Under Japanese rules, empty points surrounded only by one player's living stones can become that player's territory. Captured stones also enter the final accounting. When neither player wishes to continue, they stop, confirm which groups are alive and agree on the territory before the result is final. A group with two genuine separate eyes is ordinarily safe from capture; apparent eyes that can be broken are not enough. Some opposed groups instead remain alive because neither side can safely fill their shared liberties; under Japanese rules, these shared points do not simply become either player’s territory.

After both players agree that play is over and settle which groups are dead, Japanese scoring compares each side’s empty territory plus the opposing stones it captured, then applies any komi. In physical counting, captured stones fill the territory of the side that lost them; the result is equivalent. Suppose Black has twelve empty points and three white prisoners: fifteen. White has ten empty points and one black prisoner, plus six and a half points of komi: seventeen and a half. White wins this invented example by two and a half points; it is not a record of a played game.

A ko is a position in which each player could take the other's single stone in turn. Japanese rules forbid an immediate recapture, which would repeat the same position; a move elsewhere must come first. In an even game, White receives komi to offset Black's first move. Nihon Ki-in's introduction gives six and a half points as a usual Japanese figure. A handicap game works differently: the weaker player starts with black stones already placed, and White makes the first move after setup.

The opening, or fuseki, establishes a broad relationship among corners, sides and centre. The middle game may involve fighting over the safety of groups and the space they can surround. Endgame moves then settle smaller boundaries. These are ways to read the changing task on the board, not fixed move numbers. Corners and edges generally take fewer stones to enclose than the centre, but a player must judge the whole position.

A nine-line board lets a new player reach captures and a final score sooner. Thirteen and nineteen lines add space and more choices. A game record, or kifu, preserves the order of moves so players can replay a match and locate a turning point. In Japan, classrooms, amateur events and online services provide different ways to learn and play; they do not all use identical event rules.

Amateur players in Japan describe strength with kyū and dan ranks. Professionals use their own first-dan to ninth-dan scale; the same rank name does not mean the same playing strength in the two systems. Nihon Ki-in awards rank certificates. Timed competitions place a two-sided clock beside the board, while the allotted time and overtime arrangements depend on the event.

Go reached Japan from continental East Asia, but no surviving account fixes its first route or date. The Chinese Book of Sui, completed in 636, describes Go among the pastimes of people in Wa; that date belongs to the book, not to the game’s arrival. A reference to go and the zither appears in regulations for Buddhist clergy in the Taihō code of 701. The Shōsōin preserves boards and stones associated with the Nara period. The later story that Kibi no Makibi brought Go from Tang China cannot be used as its introduction date.

Go appears in Heian literature, including the Kokin Wakashū, The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book. Such references show a place for the game in courtly and monastic settings, although a literary scene cannot measure how many people played. Nihon Ki-in's historical account follows its spread among warriors and people in farming and commerce through the Kamakura and Muromachi periods.

The Tokugawa shogunate supported professional players with stipends and castle games. The Hon'inbō, Inoue, Yasui and Hayashi houses developed as rival lineages; the title of meijin and the post of godokoro mattered within this system. Go also had patrons beyond the four houses. In the later Edo period, affluent merchants and landowners invited players, who travelled to play and teach. A board handed down in the Sawamura family and documented by the Satte City museum bears a 1739 inscription on a leg tenon. The museum treats its possible use by Hon'inbō Retsugen as uncertain.

The houses lost their shogunal income and granted residences after the Meiji Restoration. A game record appeared in the Yūbin Hōchi newspaper in 1878; other papers later ran Go columns that let readers replay games away from the original room. Professional Murase Shūho and others founded the Hōensha association in 1879. Its 1883 register listed players by rank, showing that organization and grading were changing too. These new ties to readers did not make every Go club a newspaper enterprise.

After a period of competing organizations, professionals founded the Nihon Ki-in in 1924. It arranged matches, trained players and issued publications. A 1931–32 self-study series written by professional Suzuki Tamejirō and published by the Ki-in is one surviving example of its teaching work. The first Hon’inbō title tournament began in 1939, turning the inherited name of one Edo house into a title contested by modern players. In the 1930s, Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru tested new fuseki ideas, reconsidering how the opening distributes influence across the board.

Some major matches continued during the Pacific War, while conditions worsened: Go magazines stopped publication in 1944 and the Nihon Ki-in building burned in a 1945 air raid. After the war, newspapers expanded professional and amateur competitions, television presented games to viewers, and school and youth events offered other entry points.

People in Japan now encounter Go through clubs, classes, competitions and network play. Nihon Ki-in’s chronology records the first World Amateur Go Championship in 1979, its online playing service in 2004, and a regular professional-versus-computer event in 2013. The Ki-in livestreamed the 2016 AlphaGo–Lee Sedol match held in Seoul. A 2023 Ki-in interview described professional use of Go engines in study and AI evaluations shown during broadcasts. Japanese institutions participate in a larger international game; scoring methods and professional structures still differ among regions.