Perhaps 21st Century go really belongs in the 20th century. In 1937 Go Seigen checked into a sanatorium in Fujimi Heights. His doctor, Dr Masaki Fujokyu, later wrote about Go's time there.
"I didn't know the game of go, but I did know that a genius known as Go Seigen had been naturalised in Japan, was devoted to studying go and was one to watch for the future. "I gladly undertook to examine Go. When he came to the sanatorium, he was accompanied by Segoe [Kensaku] and Kita Fumiko. His room was in the Fuji ward and had a splendid view of Fuji and the Southern Alps.
"Go was a model patient. He submitted completely to the doctors' orders, and we never once had any inconvenience from his behaviour. That might seem natural, but often patients in a sanatorium, for one reason or another, are in an unusual mental state and many of them were difficult to control.
"His go may have been in fine fettle, but as regards his illness, he was quite indifferent, particularly to tuberculosis, and it seems that he had decided that disease was firmly in the province of the doctors. [...] He was in the sanatorium for 15 months. In that time he asked me about his symptoms only twice. One occasion was when newspaper reporters were to come once a week from Tokyo in order to do go commentaries, and talk with him for about two hours, and he asked if that was all right. In other words he was anxious that it might make his illness worse. I told him he could do it.
"Whenever I went to his room on my weekly rounds, a go board was out and seven or eight stones were on it. They were never in the corners but in the centre. Although I had only a glimpse I thought, aha he's begun to study something. Even now I remember that for around three weeks the number of stones never increased."
It will be noted that this was just one year after he played the innovative White 8 that he now says is bad.