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Concept notes Sabaki サバキ This is a verbal noun derived from the verb sabaku, meaning to cope, handle, deal with. Many go dictionaries do not recognise it as a go term. For example, Hayashi Yutaka, in his large encyclopaedia does not list the term, although he does give two proverbs: sabaki wa tsuke kara and sabaki yurusanu burasagari. The Seibundo Igo Annai glossary also omits the term. The Nihon Ki-in's book of terms simply says: "Coping deftly so that one's stones do not stagnate." They give an example:
White, it says, needs a move at d4 to repair his thin shape. Simply playing there is gote (too slow). He does this best by playing b4, then if Black b5: d4, a4, g4. Coping deftly fits this perfectly. Note that White is playing in an area which he dominates, and is not really running away or playing lightly. The Igo Club Go Encyclopaedia repeats the Nihon Ki-in definition but does not bother with an example diagram. Books, or even book chapters, devoted to the topic are rare. However, in Hayago ni tsuyoku naru ho (How to become strong in fast games), Otake Hideo devotes a third of its space to a section headed "Techniques of sabaki." It is about moves such as White's b4 above rather than any grand concept. But as an introduction he says the following: Sabaki is written with the character 捌き. It is a noun from sabaku but nowadays, as a technical term, it seems to be written only in katakana. Sabaku basically means "handling things well" or "resolving something disordered", and so in go too it is understood to mean similarly coping skilfully when stones are contending with each other. Otake then goes on to say that it is an important aspect of playing fast games because it helps one (typically by handling a situation in sente, as in the Nihon Ki-in example) control the flow of the game. So the Japanese seem ambivalent as to whether this is a technical term or not, let alone a major concept. Even if it is a concept, it is one on the vague level of (say) invading rather than aji - it is something you do rather than something you create or exploit. The basic meaning (coping deftly) is really rather simple - it is the array of techniques that is important. Western players appear to have created a concept of their own, perhaps by confusion with shinogi (saving weak groups). The Go Almanac definition of sabaki, for example, is "Making light, flexible shape in order to save a group." More specifically, shinogi is (according to Hayashi) "making life, without incurring loss, for stones that are under attack". the Nihon Ki-in book uprates this to "without incurring loss or detrimentally affecting one's adjacent stones". However, the pioneering English work Strategic Concepts of Go - still highly recommended - says "the meaning behind sabaki in Japanese is development" and that this carries over into go. This is an attempt to convey the implicit dynamism in the term. The examples given show that the compiler understood perfectly well what it means on the go board, but the word 'development' is perhaps best avoided because of confusion with other terms, especially nowadays when the Korean term haengma is often bandied about. SCG does, though, usefully make the point that there is a subdivision of sabaki called karui sabaki (light sabaki). Unlike shinogi, which requires no loss to be incurred, light sabaki can - and often does - accept some loss (i.e. sacrifice, which is a form of lightness). Note that the concept is better known in shogi. Ito Sokan II was noted also for developing it as the art of opening up a game through exchanges to enhance the effectiveness of one's pieces. 'Development' might be the best term in that case. Useful proverbs
The English usage of make/achieve sabaki is not normal in Japanese, where the verb forms of sabaku are preferred. It is, however, possible to say sabaki o tsukeru. © John Fairbairn & T Mark Hall (GoGoD), London 2008. |
