The most obvious and famous thing about the Big Dictionary of Go is its size. Even today it is still known for that, but on its complete appearance, which spanned three years after Volume 1 (of three) appeared in 1933, such a monster must have caused a huge stir in the little pond of go books.
As a measure of the number of teeth in this pike, it has 19,605 diagrams spread over three large volumes. For the alleged "1,000 Variations of the Taisha" it gives 800 diagrams. For comparison, the Ishida dictionary (translated by Ishi Press) gives about 260.
The nearest thing to the Daijiten in Japanese is the Joseki Shojiten and the similarity is genetic. This "Small Dictionary" is derived from Big
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| Not untypical Japanese go players of the 1930s |
That last point is probably the reason the Igo Daijiten is no longer seen. It is written entirely in classical Japanese, so while Fujiwara no Sai might well feel at home with it, Shindo Hikaru would feel very uncomfortable, given the way he seems to attend to his schoolwork. Apart from the very different grammar, there are no concessions as regards characters, either: kogeimagakari was 小斜走縣り rather than the modern 小桂馬掛り or the Hikaru-esque 小ゲイマガカリ. 豎子 was a sagari.
A further difficulty was the literary style, full of allusions. None of this was a difficulty at the time. After all, go was the game of the educated intelligentsia and the ruling class. Adverts in Kido did not then aim at men who buy beer or whisky, but at wing-collared men who could buy new cars or women who bought sewing machines for their maids. A move might be described as "too low" but it could just as easily call forth a reference to Confucius and Mencius: "The lowly man perhaps does not realise how large the world is." A player might well attack, but he could also "sharpen his spear." These are not overdone, however, and more homely sayings also appear: capturing nuisance stones "like rats in a sack."
Probably it was only the patronage of wealthy people that allowed Igo Daijiten to appear. Apart from its size, its list of authors was large and no doubt expensive.
The book itself says nothing about collaboration. It is attributed entirely to Suzuki Tamejiro. However, it has been clear from other references over the years that it was a team effort. At the head was Suzuki, of course. At the time he was probably the top active player. His games with Segoe Kensaku in the twice-yearly Oteai (on the GoGoD CD) were effectively for the title of world champion, and Suzuki seemed to have the edge, although some of his games may have been won on stamina. He insisted on three-day games (16 hours each) instead of the usual two-days. His philosophy was that you should never take a stone out if the bowl unless you knew exactly why. He passed that way of playing on to his pupils.
The Daijiten was in fact said to be the product of his pupils' study of joseki. Those who should have rated a mention as co-workers in the original edition were, apparently, Kitani Minoru, Sekiyama Riichi, Shimamura Toshihiro, Kobayashi Seiichi, Suzuki Goro and Suzuki Masaharu.
Furthermore, the cream of go writers was drafted in, too. Kohara Masahiro was the son of a pro. Kurumi Masaki studied to be a pro with Kogishi Soji before leaving to devote himself to law and literature - to him are probably due many of the flourishes in Daijiten - and Mizutani Suihei was another outstanding writer.
The dictionary also begat a "New" edition for which the review work was attributed to Kitani Minoru, Suzuki Goro and Kano Yoshinori and Otake Hideo. This was published in December 1980, but it appears that it was essentially a new version of the original work that Suzuki began some 10 years after the war (the original being lost in the ruins). He completed the work in the year that he died and that appears to have stymied its publication. However, it was revived on the 17th anniversary of his death, under the editorship of Nakajima Koji, and published, once again by Seibundo Shinkosha, as a way of preserving for ever the largest go work of the Showa era. For an interesting comparison of the two editions, and some extra details, we present the prefaces from each one.
The much later Shojiten was credited to Suzuki Tamejiro and Kitani Minoru, though of course the first name was there mainly out of respect - Suzuki had been dead for five years.
See the next page for a concrete sample of these two works.