This is the second of ten parts devoted to a famous but still neglected ten-game match held almost 50 years ago.

Game 2, held in Tokyo on 24 September 1954.

Hashimoto Utaro 9-dan had lost Game 1 on his home territory, and had upset many of his fans. But he merely had lost with White in an uchikomi match. It was therefore nothing to worry about as he made his way to Tokyo for the next encounter. Of course, by the same token, this was a game he was expected to win.

The uchikomi system was effectively the special preserve of the sponsors, the Yomiuri Shinbun. It was the normal way of playing matches until the early part of the 20th century, when tournament go began to replace matches. The special demands of tournaments and  their  one-off encounters led to the use of komi - compensation of around 5 points given to White to balance Black's advantage in playing first. The precise amount of komi to provide that balance is still in dispute, and in the past couple of years there have been moves to increase it up to as much as 8 points.

But in uchikomi go there is no komi (there is no connection between the two occurrences of  "komi" here). In this case, the balance is maintained by alternating the right to play first. Where players have the same relative grade, they play even - alternating Black and White every game. If there is one grade difference, the weaker player takes Black in two out of every three games. With two grades difference, the weaker player takes Black in every game. Where the word uchikomi (beating down) comes in is when one player in a series goes four games up. The loser is "beaten down" to the next handicap. This was traditionally seen as a great dishonour, and many matches would diplomatically be called off just the beating down was administered.

The system was complicated to administer because the relative grades were not the dan grades of each player, but their results against each other, however long ago. Whenever two players met, they did not decide the handicap or the colours according to their dan grades, but according to the last game between them. It was generally accepted that if a player was promoted, all the slates were wiped clean and he would start again with each player at whatever handicap/colour was prescribed by the difference in dan grades. But there were plenty of instances where a crotchety individual would try to make a name for himself by refusing to clean the slate - in effect, he was calling the promotion invalid - and demanding a match to force the promotee into beating him down over the board and not just on paper.

Yomiuri publicity
It is not hard to see why such a system atrophied in the modern age. But in the 1930s, Shoriki Matsutaro, the president of the Yomiuri newspaper scored a major triumph by resurrecting it for a series of 10-game uchikomi matches involving the prodigy Go Seigen who had been brought to Japan in 1928. Shoriki, who had only become a newspaperman when he was forced to retire as head of the Tokyo police force to take responsibility for the Toranomon Incident (attempted assassination of Crown Prince Hirohito) in 1923, was close to a genius when it came to publicity. He was behind the introduction of pro baseball in Japan, founding the Yomiuri Giants in 1934.

Go, however, was one of the earliest gimmicks he used to turn the then ailing paper into what is now the world's biggest circulation daily. Games would be shown on giant boards on the Yomiuri building, causing traffic snarl-ups as people craned their necks to see the next move. It was a publicity coup of the same dimensions as the Kasparov-Deep Blue chess match. Quite why uchikomi matches struck such a strong chord with the public is unclear - perhaps it was the use of a traditional system at a time of nationalist fervour, but more likely it was simply seen as the ultimate head-to-head test, go's equivalent of the world chess championship. The strong association of the Yomiuri with go continues to this day, and they currently sponsor Japan's major tournament, the Kisei.

Although the post-war matches lacked something of the public excitement of the pre-war Yomiuri games, they were still running strongly  in the early fifties - the period of this Hashimoto-Fujisawa match. But because the Nihon Ki-in was against it, it did not report the games in the main go magazine, Kido, and that is part of the reason it has been unfairly neglected.

So let us concentrate on their match again. As we have seen, Fujisawa won Game 1 with Black, but that was only to be expected with no komi. It was just like holding the serve in tennis. Winning with White, of course, was just as devastating as breaking serve.

The game was in the ultra-smart area of Tokyo called Kioicho, in the elegant traditional inn called Fukudaya, not far from the New Otani hotel and the Asakusa Palace. The Fukudaya has probably hosted more major title games than any other venue.

Poetry and prose
Yomiuri's observer for the game, Yamada Fukumenshi, recalled mixed feelings about the venue for he had been one of the victims of the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, and as he gazed out of the window he could see the embankment of the palace moat where he had been forced to camp out. He mused on the fact that it would mean nothing to the players, especially Fujisawa, who having been born in 1919, would only have toddling around - all irrelevant but amusing when you thought of Fujisawa's rather portly adult frame. 

It was a feature of the early Yomiuri go columns that they were assigned to people who could write well. The most outstanding example was the Nobel prize-winner Kawabata Yasunari - his novel Master of Go is about one Yomiuri-sponsored game. The novelist Muramatsu Shofu was another. 

Even the "hack" writers like Yamada were capable of turning out a Zen poem to illuminate a game. This is a dead art in go, now. The sort of colour we read now is often limited to who ate what at lunch: pasta noodles mean the player wants stamina, so he can expect a long, drawn-out game.

In contrast Yamada began here by pointing up Hashimoto's unusual second move, Black 3. He had played it before, in his match against Go Seigen, but it was "the sacred sword in the family heirlooms, to be drawn from its scabbard but rarely."

There was a mellow mood. As he waited for Fujisawa to reply, Hashimoto gazed at the autumn landscape visible across the rooftops they could see from the top floor of the two-storey Fukudaya. Despite the factions they ostensibly represented, the two players were mellow chaps. They would fight to the death during the game, but that was the end of it. 

Back to basics
In the post-game discussions, which are mainly for the benefit of the newspaper's columnist and so effectively take the place of a press conference, neither player would try to convince his opponent: "If only I had played there I would have won."

Both players also reverted to their natural types for this game. After trying to play slowly in Game 1, Hashimoto resumed his normal quick play. Fujisawa, who had managed his time perfectly in that game, lapsed back into his bad habit of letting his time slip by "before I am aware of it." The burden of having White probably made Fujisawa decide he had to have a good think.

In Japanese title games players have no contact with the clocks, or as it used to be, the timekeeper's wristwatch. Instead the job of recording the game is given to a young pro - in this case Miyamoto Yoshihisa, one of Hashimoto's pupils. He, or sometimes a second person, is also responsible for keeping the time. 

Towards the end he might announce "30 minutes to go", or respond to questions about how long the last move took. But other than that, there was nothing to warn a player that time was inexorably passing, and after a specially good lunch on a muggy day, with such long time limits there was nothing to stop a chap sneaking a quick snooze. Day 2 was always especially bad, because few players could sleep properly overnight with the sealed-move position swimming before their eyes.

Storm-tossed
By the time he played move 78, Fujisawa had only 15 minutes of his 10-hour allowance left. By move 84 he was down to 10 minutes, and by move 100 he was into overtime. That meant he had to play every move within 60 seconds, with the timekeeper counting out the last 10. Move 86 was the first sign he was under pressure. It was not a wasted move, but it was not urgent - Black would be in no hurry to play there. White's flow had been broken. 

Black 87 caused him to grimace. He started sighing and muttering to himself: "Of course there had to be a clever move" and "Now I'm in trouble." (Unlike in chess, talking and other normal social habits - sometimes obnoxious ones - are freely indulged in during go games.) The inference was obvious. Despite all the time he had taken, Fujisawa had overlooked this move completely.

As Yamada eloquently put it, Fujisawa was now like the fisherman in a storm-tossed boat, with a single layer of planking keeping him between life and death. Each minute of overtime came crashing over him like a new cresting wave.

On move 101 Hashimoto suddenly said "excuse me" and shifted from the normal polite kneeling position to sit tailor fashion. His legs had gone to sleep. Fujisawa laughed and joined him in the more relaxed posture. Maybe the interruption affected Hashimoto, for he missed a better move for 101. In the post mortem he declared he should have played 154.

It was the sort of slip that Fujisawa would pounce on, however little time he had. It let him stay in the game. Then Hashimoto played "a very bad move which made White's earlier slack move at 86 into a good move" - Black 129. When Fujisawa replied at 130, Hashimoto suddenly glared at it, then sought inspiration in the ceiling, glared back at the board again... His expression was now far from mellow. He spent 38 minutes before reluctantly deciding to sacrifice four stones with 131.

But the relentless pounding of the waves of overtime eventually took its toll on Fujisawa, first with a slip on 156 - a move two points to the right of 153 would have kept Black very uncomfortable - then with 158, the losing move (the result would still be unclear if he played to the left of 157).

The day after the game finished, the day the result became public, Fujisawa's metaphorical dice with death among the waves paled into puny insignificance. A typhoon hit Japan and capsized several boats off Hokkaido. The largest was the passenger ship Taiyomaru, just out of Hakodate on its way to Aomori. It sank with the loss of 1,155 lives.

Game 2 in sgf format is available here. To download, right-click and choose to save the link on your machine. The moves are also shown on the following diagram.

White: Fujisawa Kuranosuke 9-dan    Black: Hashimoto Utaro 9-dan
Game 2 of 10-game uchikomi match sponsored by Yomiuri Shinbun
Played at the Fukudaya Inn, Tokyo, on 24 and 25 September 1954
No komi, 10 hours each.