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A goban is the playing surface for Go stones. A standard board has nineteen lines in each direction, creating 361 intersections where stones are placed. Japanese equipment includes legged floor boards, thinner table boards and smaller grids for beginners.
Nineteen horizontal and nineteen vertical lines create 361 playable intersections, including those along the edges and at the corners. Stones occupy those intersections, rather than the interiors of the squares. Counting lines is therefore central to reading a position.
Nine marked dots on the standard nineteen-line board are star points. The central one is tengen. They help orient the player alongside the corners, sides and centre. A star point is still an intersection within the same grid.
The Nihon Kiin’s standard-dimensions diagram gives a depth of 1.5 shaku and width of 1.4 shaku, about 45.5 by 42.4 centimetres. The Japanese association for visually impaired Go players explains that slight lengthening makes a board appear nearer square from a seated, oblique view. Individual products vary in size.
A nine-line board has nine lines in each direction; a thirteen-line board has thirteen. The Nihon Kiin uses these smaller surfaces in introductory teaching. The playing area changes, while the principle of placing stones on intersections remains the same.
The board provides the grid, black and white stones are the playing pieces, and containers hold them. These are distinct objects used together. A nineteen-line board retains that grid regardless of its material or thickness. The material of the stones does not determine the number of lines either.
A legged board raises its thick playing surface for use while seated on a floor such as tatami. A flat board sits on a table. The Nihon Kiin’s 2024 equipment guide describes both, together with folding and interlocking designs for compact storage.
Wooden boards use kaya and katsura, as well as timbers listed by the Nihon Kiin as hiba and agathis, the latter also called shinkatsura in trade. Portable boards include paper, rubber and wood. Kaya is prized in traditional equipment appraisal, but goban include more than expensive solid-kaya floor boards.
Kidori concerns the position and orientation of a board cut from a log. Masame boards show straighter grain, while itame has curved grain. End-grain patterns distinguish further cuts such as tenchimasa, tenmasa, kiura and kiomote. These are timber distinctions, not different rules of Go.
Hyūga Goboard & Stone describes selecting the cut, rough-sawing with allowances for shrinkage, prolonged natural drying and final shaping. In tachimori, lacquer carried on a blade marks the lines individually. This is the maker’s account of traditional kaya-board production; mass-produced boards may use other materials and marking methods.
Legged boards often have gardenia-fruit-shaped feet. The Nihon Kiin links them with a popular pun about keeping silent, rather than presenting a documented origin of the form. It also describes an underside recess called otouke, nicknamed heso, in relation to sound and resistance to distortion or cracking.
Kuroki Goishiten advises keeping wooden boards away from direct sun, heaters and rapid changes in temperature or humidity, with gentle wiping using a soft dry cloth. Its kaya boards have a wax finish, and the maker offers resurfacing and re-marking. Care depends on the material and finish of the individual board.
The Tōdaiji donation inventory records a mokuga shitan Go board on the twenty-first day of the sixth month of Tenpyō-shōhō eight (756), with details including ivory grid markings, flower-shaped points and legs. This is a date in the calendar used for the record, not a determination of the board’s manufacture date.
A board kept at Senzōji appears in the Hachigata Castle museum’s 2013 catalogue. From Tang-shaku measurements and underside tool marks, the museum estimates manufacture in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. It notes gardenia-shaped legs and a bamboo-and-sparrow crest beneath. Use by Uesugi Akisada is a tradition, distinct from the object’s estimated date.
An Edo-period board preserved by the Sawamura family at Satte has a Genbun-four inscription at a leg joint. The city museum treats it as evidence for manufacture in 1739. Hon’inbō Retsugen was born in 1750, so the museum describes childhood use as possible, rather than established.
After the Satte museum opened in 2018, the family deposited the board there. A museum exhibition in fiscal 2019 first displayed it locally. Photographs of the playing surface and leg joint connect its family history with visible woodworking and inscription evidence.
The Nihon Kiin museum holds the board used by Kōichi Wakata and Daniel Barry aboard Endeavour in 1996. Stickers took the place of loose stones in weightlessness. This specific adaptation changed how pieces stayed in position while retaining a grid for locating them.
The Japanese association for visually impaired Go players describes raised grid lines that fit grooves under the stones, with a raised dot distinguishing black stones. Its 2021 revised Aigo Two added black grid lines and coordinate marks around the edge, supporting both touch and use with limited vision.
The Nihon Kiin’s contemporary guide presents floor, table, folding and interlocking boards together. Seating, setting and portability affect the choice. The object’s history includes both the preservation of older boards and continuing changes in materials, environments and storage.
Nineteen lines in each direction produce 19 × 19, or 361, intersections.
No. Stones go on intersections, including those at edges and corners.
It is the central star point of a nineteen-line board.
Legged boards suit floor seating, while flat boards sit on tables; both remain in use.
No. Here it is the donation inventory’s date, not automatically the date of manufacture.