SOURCE: "Dialectics and Change in Kawabata's The Master of Go," in Modern Language Studies, Vol. XVI, No. 4, Fall, 1986, pp. 9-21.

[In the following essay, Pilarcik asserts that Kawabata's "The Master of Go … captures the poignantly beautiful fading of an era as Japan enters the modern age."]

The works of the Nobel Prize winning author, Yasunari Kawabata, are noted for their delicate, wistful beauty and haunting lyricism. They express the essence of the Japanese soul, but also draw on the universality of human experience. The Master of Go, one of Kawabata's most elegiac novels, captures the poignantly beautiful fading of an era as Japan enters the modern age. The narrative is based on the 1938 championship Go match between the aging Master Shusai and his youthful challenger, Kitani Minoru, known as Otaké in the novel. With the defeat and death of the aristocratic Master, the past gives way to the progressive, competitive, and time-obsessed forces of the new age; the grace of an elegant tradition succumbs to an unchivalrous modernity; Eastern sensibility feels the thrust of Western scientific rationalism; and ending verges on beginning in a fluid, continually changing universe. The pervasive sense of transition and flowing movement in the novel emanates from the dynamic tension of opposition inherent in the Go game, in the players, and in the very nature of the work as a blend of reportage and a lyrical point of view. This study focuses on the dialectics of the novel as the source of its subtle power and evocative beauty.

The Japanese game of Go has a profundity and spiritual depth which are often little understood in the West. For the Japanese, Go has traditionally been more than a contest of skill or endurance—it is a discipline and a creative art that originated in ancient China but developed and flowered in Japan. According to Kawabata, the Japanese "elevated" and "deepened" the game and cultivated its mysteries. The game itself consists of a board with 19 vertical and 19 horizontal lines and two sets of stones, one black and one white. The stones are placed on the 361 intersections with the intent of defining an area or territory. Symbolically, the first stone placed on the empty board is a first definition in space, and a limitation in time. The next stone stands in opposition as a reaction to it and begins a process animated by the fundamental principle of dialectical interaction and change. A dynamic tension is there by established reminiscent of the interplay of yin and yang, opposing forces within a universal unity. The players respond to each other like the two primal forces, pushing and yielding, not with the intent of destroying each other, but in order to create together in harmony. As Kajiki in his introduction to the game says, the visual image of black and white stones represents the universe as a duality in harmonious unity: "If both players of distinguished skill do their best till the end of a game, the board will be covered with black and white stones in perfect harmony. Such a game is equal to an excellent work of art beyond the result of victory or defeat."

Kawabata illustrates a game which lacks this harmony when the narrator Uragami is drawn into play with an American who has taken lessons at the Go Association. He claims to be "fascinated" with this "great invention" and is very conscious of his level of skill: "I am Grade thirteen, he said with careful precision as if doing a sum." His playing reveals that he has mastered the external forms and rules of the game but he remains detached and offers no inner resistance to his opponent. Uragami senses an "utter foreignness" that has less to do with skill than with a lack of spirit: "… he had a way of playing thoughtlessly, without really putting himself in the game. Losing did not bother him in the least. He went happily through game after game, as if to say that it was silly to take a mere game seriously…. Indeed this quickness to lose left me wondering uncomfortably if I might not have something innately evil concealed within me … The spirit of Go was missing." The game between the American and Uragami acquires an unpleasant one-sidedness which prohibits the realization of harmonious interaction, thus degenerating into something quite trivial, meaningless, and spiritless.

When Shusai confronts his opponent Otaké over the Go board, however, Uragami has the "sense of Go as an art." He is also aware of profound forces at work which transcend the fates of the individual players and even the outcome of this particular match. Their interaction mirrors the universal dialectic and the placement of stones on the board speaks of universal mysteries.

Shusai represents for Kawabata the grace and nobility of Japan's cultural heritage because his life and his approach to the game are firmly rooted in the traditions and sensibility of the past. At the very beginning of the novel he is identified as twenty-first in the Honnimbo succession of Go masters founded in the seventeenth century by the Zen Buddhist monk, Sansa. Shusai is the last to bear the title of Honnimbo in this continuous line. In addition, his life, which spans the years from 1874 to 1940, forms a bridge from the Meiji Era to the modern age. Kawabata says that in his person he embodies a "whole panorama of history … He was the symbol of Go itself…."

Shusai is the Master, a meijin who, according to Uragami, is "the last of the true masters revered in the tradition of Go as a way of life and art." Traditionally, the title, meijin, has meant more than an expert in a particular art. As D. T. Suzuki explains,

He is one who has gone beyond the highest degree of proficiency in his art. He is a creative genius … one becomes a meijin only after experiencing infinitely painstaking discipline, for only such a series of experiences leads to the intuition of the secret depths of art, that is, to the lifespring.

Meijin Shusai has dedicated his life to the pursuit of Go and the disciplining of the spirit. His playing emanates from the meditative consciousness of Zen, where, immersed totally in the game, he loses all sense of self and time. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech Kawabata describes this state of mind which is achieved by Zen disciples:

… he enters a state of impassivity, free from all ideas and all thoughts. He departs from the self and enters the realm of nothingness. This is not the nothingness or emptiness of the West. It is rather, a universe of the spirit in which everything communicates freely with everything, transcending bounds, limitless.

For the Master, therefore, Go transcends the bounds of mere game and becomes a mystical art or the means for a spiritual experience of "void."

The Master attributes his style of playing and his success in the game to having "no nerves" or "a vague absent sort." The term "vagueness" (bonyari) can have different connotations. In Osaka it implies absence, lack of definition, or unobtrusiveness as one would find in a Japanese painting; in Tokyo it refers to a slowness of apprehension or stupidity. The term suggests a certain ambiguity about the Master. On one hand, he draws on the emptiness of mind as the source of his creativity in playing, and this heightened spirituality evokes a sense of absence or other-worldliness about him. Uragami says he suggests "some rarefied spirit floating over a void." On the other hand, he appears to have a rather tenuous and detached hold on every-day life. People, scenery, and events pass before him unnoticed: "He sat in silence, as if not aware of the view before him. He did not look at the other guests." Even physically he gives the appearance of lacking substance—his body is like that of an under-nourished child, and his temperature remains at a cool 96-97 degrees. Looking at a picture of the dead man's face, Uragami sees "the ultimate in tragedy, of a man so disciplined in an art that he had lost the better part of reality."

When seated at the Go board, however, the Master commands a powerful and distinctive position. He is a "grand figure"—the invincible Master towering over the board in an unself-conscious ease. Lost in meditation, he experiences the game, his opponent, and his own self as one; thus the game flows spontaneously, effortlessly from him, as though it were unfolding of its own accord: "It perhaps told of his age and experience, the fact that like the flow of water or the drifting of clouds a White formation quietly took shape over the lower reaches of the board in response to careful and steady pressure from Black…." The impression of power and strength that emanates from his spiritual involvement in the game stands in marked contrast to the frailty of his ailing body.

There is also an extremeness about the Master which manifests itself as coldness and insensitivity. He is not inclined to express emotions, warmth or gratitude even to his most ardent disciples and supporters. His wife assumes the responsibility for social niceties and acts as his spokesman. Swann interprets this as an understandable "narrowness" arising from a total immersion in his art. The insatiable hunger he exhibits for games, however, borders on obsession. When he is not at the Go board, he constantly looks for other games in which he can lose himself. Uragami describes him as a "starving urchin" and indicates the presence of inner conflict: "Even after the August 10 session he had to have games to divert him. To me it was as if he were suffering the torments of hell." This raises some doubt about the purity of the Master's spiritual desire. Is he seeking escape from the exigencies of ordinary reality in the mystical state of "void?" Or is it, as Iwamoto and Wagenaar suggest, an indication that he is finding it increasingly difficult to achieve the mystical state?

Uragami also questions whether the Master has betrayed his ideal by his very participation in this match at the age of sixty-four and in failing health. Because he accepted the challenge for a "price without precedent" from the sponsoring newspaper, the possibility exists that he did not "go forth in combat" but rather allowed himself "to be lured" in by the newspaper. In former times the title of meijin was more than a sign of skill for competition purposes, and the holder of the title would often deliberately avoid real competition in order not to do injury to it. In the new age, however, emphasis shifts to a more competitive involvement in title matches with monetary rewards. Thus, Shusai stands "at the boundary between the old and the new," an anachronism whose art no longer fits in with the spirit of the times.

The new age finds its representative in the challenger Otaké. Despite an inconsistent record, Otaké defeated several opponents, including his own teachers, in the contest sponsored by the Go Association to determine who would oppose the Master in this historic match. The contrast he presents with the Master is striking. Instead of the cold, severe dignity of a sublime spirituality, he manifests the warm amiability of a world-oriented personality. This is apparent even in the fact that he is physically sturdier, weighing nearly twice as much as the Master. He exudes a sense of virility, and robust earthiness, maintains a lively household with several students, and demonstrates a light-hearted humor, and social ease. Although he is clearly dedicated to Go, he has not sacrificed life for it, nor has he been "bled" by it. His approach to the game has a distinctly professional and competitive focus. Unlike the Master who loses himself in the spiritual void beyond the concerns of winning or losing, Otaké desires success. The tension thus generated by the pressures of the match provoke numerous stress-related disorders such as enuresis, diarrhea, fainting, restlessness, fidgeting, and absent-mindedness. Kawabata describes the two players seated at the board as a contrast of "quiet against constant motion, nervelessness against nervous tension."

Otaké's playing relies on deliberate effort, careful planning, and even scheming to attain his end because he cannot abandon himself to the harmony of spontaneous play. Despite his nervousness, however, he has a powerful concentration and resolve that are manifested as an aggressive driving force. The Master's playing is compared to the flowing of water or drifting of clouds, but Otaké's style is almost brutally determined. Uragami feels that he "would avert defeat even if in the process he must chew the stones to bits." Iwamoto and Wagenaar describe it as an "egoistic will to power" quite different from the "Oriental ideal of self-negation." This creates the atmosphere of darkness and oppression in his game:

There was something oppressive about it, something that seemed to push up from deep within, like a strangled cry. Concentrated power was on a collision course, one looked in vain for a free and natural flow. The opening moves had been heavy and a sort of inexorable gnawing had followed.

Uragami frequently focuses on the gap in the amount of playing time used by the players to reveal their fundamental spiritual incompatibility. The Master's playing has the characteristic speed and spontaneity of intuitive non-intellectualization. He says, "I'm not much of a thinker." On the other hand, Otaké indicates, "I start thinking and there's no end to it." Otaké's total time spent in play equals nearly twice that of the Master precisely because of his tendency to engage in endless mental debate. In fact, he habitually runs out of time and almost exhausts the allowed limits set for the match. For the Master external time is not a conscious factor because while playing he is centered in the experience of now. In keeping with the spirit of Zen, he makes his moves in an unself-conscious, noncontrived manner as though they evolved of their own accord at the right moment. Otaké's method of evaluating, weighing, planning, and analyzing can consume as much time as is available and only result in mental frenzy and indecision. Instead of a nowcenteredness, Otaké finds himself in constant conflict with the ticking clock.

Both players have restrictions of time placed on them by the establishment of time allotments set at forty hours per person. The Master had determined the number, believing that by setting the total deliberately high he had in effect eliminated the temporal limitation. Since he had been trained in a period when such rules did not exist, the time allotments have little meaning for him and exert no influence on his playing. Otaké, however, is subject to fainting when running out of time. His internal time sense is obscured by the demands of linear temporality. Instead of losing himself to the natural flow and movement of the game, he succumbs to the turmoil of a time-obsessed consciousness. Because time is such a conscious element in his playing, he turns his attention to ways by which he can circumvent it. The time allotments and sealed play become for him a potential means for new tactics and strategy.

Traditionally, Go has relied on very few formal rules in order to allow as much creative freedom as possible to the players. For this match, however, special restrictions are imposed in order to insure equality and fair play. In the past, elitism and unspoken social customs of courtesy, respect, and deference could have easily worked to the advantage of the higher-ranked player, but the incorporation of the time allotments and sealed play deny the Master any special status due to his rank and force him to curb his whims. According to Uragami, it made no difference that the Master's art was forged by the arbitrariness of spontaneity: "he could not stand outside the rules of equality." Thus, courtesy gives way to justice, and the game undergoes a shift in emphasis from the finesse and mysterious elegance of Go as art to the regulation and objectivity of Go as competitive sport:

It may be said that the Master was plagued in his last match by modern rationalism, to which fussy rules were everything, from which all the grace and elegance of Go as art had disappeared … One conducted the battle only to win, and there was no margin for remembering the dignity and fragrance of Go as an art.

It is evident from the outset that Otaké is approaching the game on a different level from that of the Master, and that he is less concerned with art than with his personal victory. Throughout the game he is adamant about adherence to the rules and fights to maintain the letter of the law on technical matters even when the request is made to shorten the four-day recesses to two days because of the Master's worsening health. He feels that any concession made to the Master could threaten the imposed structure of the game and work to his disadvantage. And yet he does not hesitate to use any legal strategy to advance himself even if it is ruthless and unorthodox.

There is a saying in the Tao Te Ching:

     The more prohibitions there are,…
     The more benighted will the whole land grow.
     The more cunning craftsmen there are,
     The more pernicious contrivances will be invented.

In similar fashion, Uragami notes: "When a law is made, the cunning that finds loopholes goes to work. One cannot deny that there is a certain slyness among young players, a slyness which, when rules are written to prevent slyness, makes use of these rules themselves."

Otaké's disregard for the aesthetics of the game becomes evident fairly early. For example, the positioning of Black 63 as a "spy" in the white formation is an aggressive invasion not in keeping with the natural flow of the game. It strikes the Master as "a trifle unorthodox." The subsequent playing of Black 69, however, reveals the use of cunning and deceit. Otaké had obviously sealed an irrelevant move and used the long recess to deliberate his plan of attack. Then he attempted to conceal this fact by pretending to deliberate for nearly 20 minutes before placing his stone on the board. His Black 69 cuts boldly into the Master's formation and is described as a "violent attack," "a diabolic stroke," and is even likened to "the flash of a dagger." Uragami says, "A little unkind of you?" The Master feels that this is a ruthless violation of the sanctity of the game—"a sealed play that seemed to take advantage of the fact that it was a sealed play." Although on the verge of forfeiting, the Master responds with White 70—a move that makes the spectators "speechless with admiration." He did not attempt a counter-attack, meeting force with force, but instead, had yielded to the attack, sacrificed his stones, and allowed the aggression of his opponent to turn against itself: "Black had made gains, and yet it seemed that White, casting away the dressings from his wounds, had emerged with greater lightness and freedom of action." The Master thus incorporates Otaké's aggression into the harmony and art of the game.

The final smear on the art of Go and the decisive conflict that determines the outcome of the match are again initiated by Otaké's clever manipulation of the regulations to gain a personal advantage. The moves from Black 121 to White 130 reduce the game to the level of a personal battle in which the Master suffers an unchivalrous death-blow. Black 121 is Otaké's sealed play and should have been fairly predictable given the situation on the board. However, when Yamata opens the envelope, he has difficulty locating it because it is quite removed from the tense conflict brewing in the center of the board. Attention is thus diverted from the crucial battle while the Master responds to the new threat against his stones. It is an abrupt and unexpected jolt from the natural course of the game and an obvious tactical attempt to gain more time. The Master perceives this as a trick, an offense against the game, and a violation of the harmonious creation of art. Although outwardly composed, this move brings the Master to the breaking point. The physical ailments, the rules that rob him of any special status and courtesy, the strains of prolonged playing, and the ignoble techniques of his opponent all contribute to the rupture that comes with the unexpectedness of Black 121. He says in an intense voice, "'The match is over. Mr. Otaké ruined it with that sealed play. It was like smearing ink over the picture we had painted….'" Pushed to the limit, the Master lashes out against Otaké on a personal and vengeful level by using White 130 to strike a strong retaliatory counter-attack against the Black position in the lower right. Uragami reacts in the following manner:

I was startled. It was a wholly unexpected play. I felt a tensing of my muscles, as if the diabolic side of the Master had suddenly been revealed. Detecting a flaw in the plans suggested by Black 129, so much in Otaké's own characteristic style, had the Master dodged away and turned to infighting by way of counter-attack? Or was he asking for a slash so that he might slash back, wounding himself to down his adversary?

With White 130 his disappointment and "angry disdain" are vented but the short-lived moment of revenge reduces the game to a personal clash that ultimately costs him the match. Otaké forces him back to the defensive and he becomes powerless to turn back "the crushing wave" that follows. The Master is defeated—but not with honor, not with dignity.

As the Master plays White 130, the sound of a virtuoso flute drifts into the room and seems "to quiet somewhat the storm on the board." The flute signals a reassertion of equilibrium after the disruption and conflict between the two players. Afterwards, the game resumes a natural flow, but the course of the match has produced noticeable changes in the Master and even in Otaké. After his return from St. Luke's Hospital, the Master no longer clips his hair short in the Buddhist fashion, but leaves it long and dyed black. He also becomes significantly time-conscious. For the first time he comments on the amount of time consumed by Otaké: "'He does take his time,'… 'More than an hour already?'" On the morning of the crucial battle, the Master makes an uncharacteristic observation: "'The Condor flew in last night at ten thirty.'… 'Can you imagine such speed?'" In addition, Uragami notes that he continually looks at his watch! He also shows signs of impatience, irritability and indecisiveness as is evidenced by his rapping on the rim of the brazier and muttering to himself. Towards the end of the match he begins to reminisce about the past and expresses a new sense of amiability, inviting the observers to come closer to the board in order to get a better view.

Otaké, on the other hand, is no longer subject to the same sort of anxieties and tensions once his success is assured. His pace in the game accelerates and he slips into an internally generated momentum unaffected by the time allotments. At one point, he even appears to lose himself so completely in the game that he experiences the sort of mystical surrender that had previously characterized the Master. Uragami is struck by his appearance: "The round full face had the completeness and harmony of a Buddha head. It was an indescribably marvelous face—perhaps he had entered a realm of artistic exaltation. He seemed to have forgotten his digestive troubles." At the end of the match, Otaké sits quietly with head bowed, then retreats to the garden where he sinks into deep meditation. The Master, however, shows considerable interest in the amount of time he used in playing.

For the Master this match marks the end of a long career, the dissipation of his life energies, and the death of his art. A year later during a brief visit, Uragami experiences this unsettling death. He sees it in the way the Master places his stones on the Go board during two practice matches with his disciples—they no longer make the distinct clicking sound. He sees it in the human and personal loneliness now emanating from the frail figure which is quite different from the lonely isolation of the artist who is removed from the mundane affairs of ordinary life. The Master has become very human, "a sweet old gentleman" desiring company and a good talk. Distressed by this change in the Master, Uragami hurries away declining the Master's entreaties to stay for dinner. As he explains to his wife, "I don't like having people die."

Kawabata in the persona of his narrator, Uragami, has clearly created more than an objective report of this Go match. Not only does he personally interact with the players, even interceding when necessary to reconcile tensions, but he also responds subjectively and intimately to what he observes. His accurate and detailed record of the proceedings is combined with a sensitive and personal point of view which shapes the tone and structure of the novel. In his perceiving consciousness the intuitive and subjective are counter-balanced with the rational and objective. One result is the frequent juxtaposing of a subjective response with a rational explanation. For example, the Master appears to grow larger at the Go board which Uragami feels is the result of the power of his art and long years of discipline and training, but he also includes the explanation that he has a disproportionately long trunk. In another instance, Uragami observes the Master's quickened breathing and responds to it on different levels:

Yet the heaving of those thin, hunched shoulders was what struck me most forcefully. I felt as if I were the uninvited witness to the secret advent of inspiration, painless, calm, unknown to the Master and not perceived by others.

But afterwards it seemed to me that I had rather outdone myself. Perhaps the Master had but felt a twinge of pain in his chest. His heart condition was worse as the match progressed, and perhaps he had felt the first spasm at that moment.

This dual vision can be likened to the defective camera with which he takes pictures of the dead Master. Because of the defective shutter, Uragami must adjust the shutter speed manually. Thus the technical precision of the camera is coupled with his own subjective judgment about the quantity of light that strikes the film. The Master once said of Uragami that he had a "remarkable eye for details." Equally significant is the manner in which the details strike the perceiving consciousness. When Uragami first sees the photographs of the dead Master, he feels there are major discrepancies between the reality that he photographed and the images that appear on the film. The face that he photographed has a softness, richness, and intensity of feeling that were not evident in the actual face of the dead man nor in the nature of the man while living. In life the Master seemed remote, apart from reality, vague, absent; but in death his image possesses a life-likeness that blurs the separation of life and death. Like the novel itself, they capture a mood, a power, and a sadness that are inexplicable and yet "true." The truth derives from the harmonious tension of inner and outer reality. Kawabata is not concerned with revealing an inner landscape or penetrating the multiple facets of an individual personality at the expense of external reality. In fact, the perceiving consciousness of the narrator, rather than dominating the narrative, often becomes transparent or mirror-like as it receives stimuli from the external world.

The entire novel is filled with camera-like snapshots of brief thoughts, impressions, and observations. Uragami catches these instants and positions them in such a way that they evoke a hidden meaning. The lack of explanations and logical connectives creates a silence or emptiness against which the images strike. In the following passage as image follows image directly and without causal connectives, all senses are brought into play to create an impression of simultaneity:

When play began, however, the sky was lightly clouded over once more. There was a strong enough breeze that the flowers in the alcove swayed gently. Aside from the waterfall in the garden and the river beyond, the silence was broken only by the distant sound of a rock cutter's chisel. A scent of red lilies wafted in from the garden. In the almost too complete silence a bird soared grandly beyond the eaves. There were sixteen plays in the course of the afternoon….

In this suspended moment, the distant sounds intensify the silence, and the subtle movements of a swaying branch and soaring bird give an internal dynamism to the stillness. The last sentence abruptly ends the moment, jolting us with the realization that considerable time has passed.

The juxtapositioning of images also prevents the work from becoming sentimental or maudlin. When emotions become too deep, Uragami resorts to silence or dissolves them into an impersonal atmosphere. For example, during a recess he focuses on the aristocratic, frail figure of the Master as he takes a walk up a short slope. His delicately veined hands are clasped behind his back:

He was carrying a folded fan. His body, bent forward from the hips, was perfectly straight, making his legs seem all the more unreliable. From below the thicket of dwarf bamboo, along the main road, came a sound of water down a narrow ditch.

The Master appears like an exquisite blossom on the point of fading, evoking a sense of poignant nostalgia or what the Japanese refer to as mono no aware—the sad awareness of beauty in a fleeting moment. The connection between the Master and sound of water is aesthetic and intuitive, not logical, and it affects a profound reaction in Uragami:

Nothing more—and yet the retreating figure of the Master somehow brought tears to my eyes. I was profoundly moved, for reasons I do not myself understand.

Shattering this moment before it becomes sentimentalized are the Master's words: "A swallow, a swallow." Suddenly, as if given a subtle shock, our attention shifts away from the Master up to the sky, then in the next sentence down again: "Beyond him was a stone informing us that the Meiji Emperor had deigned to stay at the inn." In this brief passage, present, past, man and nature are held in an impersonal, timeless instant.

Intuitive, associative leaps also affect the pace and structure of the novel creating a tension between the chronological progression of events and the flow of memory. On one hand, Uragami has noted precise times and dates for the events of the match. Like Otaké, he indicates a careful consciousness of clock-time that divides reality into objective segments. The narrative, however, does not follow a linear progression. He relies on the intuitive associations of memory to fragment the chronology and juxtapose various points to create the sense of an unfolding of what already is. In the first four chapters, for example, the movement threads chronologically backwards from the Master's death to his final days, then to the last play of the match at precisely 2:42 on the afternoon of December 4th. It then reverses direction moving ahead to the day after the match, skips ahead a few more days, and ends a few years after the match. The game begins in Chapter Four. In subsequent chapters he weaves together various points along the linear continuum, disregarding sequential order, and concludes with the Master's death and the shipment of his body to Tokyo. The careful recording of dates and time expenditures establishes a chronological framework which is then reshuffled, obscuring our sense of causality and forming a time-shape that is more fluid and subjective. In his Shosetsu no Kenkyu (Studies of the Novel) Kawabata wrote that a well-ordered plot is inconsistent with the laws of nature and that in his writing he attempts to follow nature as it is. His work reflects a spontaneous, organic process rather than an intellectually conceived one, and it produces the effect of flow but not progression. The movement can be compared to the unfolding of a picture scroll in which the sequence is not causal or linear but simultaneously part of a whole.

Despite the spontaneous associations and leaps in time, there is an underlying pattern that unifies and shapes the work. It begins and ends with the Master's death, thus creating one large circle embracing the entire narrative. In the middle of the novel is another circle that is created by the Master's own premonition of his death and the repetition of a conversation between Uragami and the Master. Chapter Eighteen begins:

Once shortly after play was resumed at Ito I asked the Master whether he meant to return to St. Luke's Hospital when the match was over, or winter as usual in Atami.

"The question is whether I last that long," he said as if taking me into his confidence.

And Chapter Thirty One ends:

I asked whether at the end of the match he meant to winter in Atami or Ito or return to St. Luke's.

He replied, as if taking me into his confidence: "The question is whether I last that long."

After this internal loop there is a noticeable change in the temporal progression. Events are depicted in a more chronological and linear fashion than previously. This change in form reflects the change occurring in the Master after his return from St. Luke's, i.e. his increased concern with clock-time. The over-all effect is of a unified whole, animated by its own internal rhythm.

In form and in content, Kawabata interweaves various external and internal time experiences. Besides the associative flow of memory and the precise time references, he creates a cyclical rhythm that is enhanced by his pervasive use of nature imagery and references to changing seasonal and weather patterns. Human actions and natural occurrences continually interact or merge in a kind of animated unity. In the following passage, for example, the tensing and easing of the mood surrounding the Go game is reflected in the cyclical rhythms of the natural world:

The sky was dark with the squall Otaké had called a tempest, and the lights were on. The white stones, reflected on the mirror-like face of the board, became one with the figure of the Master, and the violence of the wind and rain in the garden seemed to intensify the stillness of the room.

The squall soon passed. A mist trailed over the mountain, and the sky brightened from the direction of Odawara, down the river. The sun struck the rise beyond the valley, locusts shrilled, the glass doors at the veranda were opened again. Four puppies were sporting on the lawn as Otaké played Black 73. Once more the sky was lightly clouded over.

The nature images also reinforce the sense that the times are in a state of upheaval and conflict. On the day that Black 121 is played, the weather is unseasonably warm and red dragonflies lie dead on the ground. Other indications of disorder are the uncharacteristic weather patterns, with frequent rains and floods, and the appearance of an azalea with two unseasonal blooms. As the Master plays the decisive White 130, however, he recalls the words from a piece of music learned in his childhood: "From high in the hills, see the valley below. Melons in blossom, all in a row." These words from the past evoke a natural scene of order and calm, suggesting that a balance will ultimately be regained in nature as well as in human affairs. The changes and disruptions are part of the cyclic unity of the universe. In fact, Uragami provides the suggestion that the hollow and superficial times into which the way of Go has fallen will not be permanent: "Examples must be legion of wisdom and knowledge that shone forth in the past and faded toward the present, that have been obscured through all the ages into the present but will shine forth in the future."

Despite this subtle indication of eventual resurgence, the main focus in the novel is the evanescent moment of ending and death. Like the eleventh century Heian writers, Murasaki and Sei Shonagon, Kawabata depicts a time when "ripeness" is "moving into decay" and "one feels the sadness at the end of glory." He laments the fading sensibilities and elegance of the past but on a level that transcends the characters personally. As he says of Otaké, "The modern way was to insist upon doing battle under conditions of abstract justice, even when challenging the Master himself. The fault was not Otaké's." And he says of the Master, "The Master himself could not have measured the tides of destiny within him, or the mischief from those passing wraiths." Their lives have led them to this particular moment of transition from the past to the modern age, and they are but part of vaster forces at work in the flux of time. The fall of the grand Master, the corruption of his art, the decline of the old sensibilities and traditions of Japan are inescapable realities. On the wall behind the board is a framed inscription: "My life, a fragment of a landscape." All things are but a minute part of a greater whole, a brief instant in eternity.

Like the eternal fluctuation of yin and yang, the conflicts and dialectical tensions that arise from the Go game and the players generate the dynamism inherent in change within a simultaneous unity. Kawabata's novel draws its subtle, provocative strength from the tension of dialectics, its beauty from a poignant sensitivity to the ephemerality of life, and its sense of harmony from an acceptance of man's place in the eternal scheme of things.