Authorship of Genji alone tells us that Murasaki Shikibu was a very clever
woman, but this scene and the other references to go (there are 24 in all) offer
evidence that she was also a confident and experienced go player, and
more than likely a strong one. Yet she was not the only such lady.
Her contemporary Sei Shonagon was clearly just as adept. Since she mentions kechi in her work, too, we shall look at that briefly, but first this may may be an appropriate point to deal with another often debated aspect of go in the Tale of Genji.
Simply because Genji has inspired so many prints and scrolls, to the extent that each scene was dissected in detail and often standardised, the type of go board shown has also come under scrutiny. It is often said that the usual image - a thinner version of the modern goban - is anachronistic.
The justification for this comment is that the only extant ancient boards, in the Shosoin in Nara, are of a completely different type. Though still meant to be floor-standing, they are decorated and are not solid. The photo below shows one of the boards (formally known as the Mokuga Shitan no Kikyoku) which was a gift from China to the Emperor Shomu (701~756).
There are many problems with assuming that Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon played with such boards. First there is the problem of getting the right materials - the board above is of red sandalwood. It was, and was meant to be, exotic. Then there is also the rather large time span of around 250 years. If it is acceptable to assume that clothing and other items had changed radically from Chinese models, there is no reason that go should stay unchanged either.
There is a traditional image, associated with the Aoi chapter, of a little girl (Murasaki) being inspected by Genji in preparation for a festival, She is standing on a go board. This too may be an anachronistic image, as a go board is not mentioned in the text, although the practice of parading children on a board certainly is a traditional one. What can be said, though, is that if this image does indeed reflect the tradition as far back as Murasaki Shikibu's time, they would be very unlikely to use a Nara style board. Having actually seen the board above, I am sure it would simply collapse under a child's weight.
Just as an aside, we have a similar problem with the go pieces. The pieces that
came with the sandalwood board were made of ivory, left, and were not called stones.
Exactly when pieces became stones is unclear, but they are certainly stones
- ishi - in the Igo Shiki. There is, however, good reason to think
that they were made of stone and clam shell in Murasaki's time. She is author
of another, very slight, work, the Murasaki Shikibu Nikki, translated
as The Diary of the Lady Murasaki by Richard Bowring (Penguin, 1996).
In one episode, the Governor of Harima gives a banquet as forfeit for losing a game of go - makewaza, a practice that seems well worth reviving!. Possibly Murasaki is there because she is known as a keen go player. There is an objet d'art there, a stand called a suhama. Bowring calls this is Chinese stand, but the name refers to a "sandspit and beach" scene. Imagine a large jigsaw piece as a tray, on legs. On the silver tray, sand, pebbles and maybe a bonsai tree represent a beach (or a desert island!), with the metal being the water. On the "water" in this case a poem was written (suhama no hotori no mizu ni kakemazetari.)
Murasaki then quotes the poem:
Ki no kuni no shirara no hama ni hirofu tefu
Kono ishi koso wa iwa to mo nare
Bowring renders this as:
Picked up from the Kirara sands at Ki, they say,
May these pebbles grow to mighty rocks.
He then adds a footnote in which he says the game was probably a form of jackstones rather than the game of go. This defies all common sense (a governor of a province giving a banquet over a game of jacks?), defies everything about go we have discussed above and will discuss next under Sei Shonagon, and seems to defy knowledge of the Nara boards. And much else.
Even more regrettably, it underestimates the poem. Hama (beach) is also used as an abbreviation for hamaguri, the clam used to make white go stones, and so as a term for go pieces in general. Though we have no absolute evidence that it was used in this way in Murasaki's time, the whole context of this scene suggests it was, and that would add an extra layer of punning (on both hama and suhama). This may seem like overegging the pudding, but such extensive punning was normal. Without it, this poem might otherwise be thought somewhat insipid. There is even the possibility of a pun on ki meaning go in its Chinese reading.
If even part of this is plausible, so that we can assume that stones were indeed stones in Murasaki's day, then that seems to make the case for a Japanese style board by then even likelier.
Before leaving Genji, if the comparison of different translations is a topic that interests you, you may wish to be aware of a book by a team of Japanese scholars, led by Yoshida Hiromu, who investigated the Waley and Seidensticker versions in the Genji Monogatari no Eiyaku no Kenkyuu (Investighation of English Translations of the Tale of Genji) published by Kyoiku Shuppan Sentaa, Tokyo, 1980. Regrettably they do not cover the go episodes.