Kibi no Makibi
Here is the Kibi no Makibi game as written down by Hayashi Genbi. As already stated, it is in Genbi's own handwriting and appears to have been written in 1860, the year before his death at the age of 83. He does not give the colours of the two players, but the Chinese expert was named as Xuan Dong and there was a note saying that that the game should have been a win for Makibi by one point but Xuan Dong's wife turned it into a tie by swallowing a stone. This was a mid-Edo version of the famous legend, and far from the original, vicious one.
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A refresher on the Makibi story may be in order.
Kibi no Makibi (695~775) was a Japanese scholar-official of the Nara period, born in the Kibi region (now Okayama). In 717 he was sent to study in Tang China, along with Abe no Nakamaro and the priest Genbo.
He returned with Genbo to Japan in 735, bringing with him knowledge of many new things from China. Among them, one legend goes, was go.
He may well have conveyed an impression of the great popularity of go then in the Chinese court, and that possibly engendered a new interest in the game in Japan, but go was already well ensconced there. Kibi no Makibi became heavily involved in politics and projects such as the construction of the Todaiji temple, but there is no record of him promoting go. The legend is in fact due to a preposterous story in the book Godansho 江談抄 (Tales of Master Oe) by another scholar-official, but of the much later Heian period, Oe no Masafusa 大江匡房 (1041~1111).
This book put forward the unfounded story that the Chinese were jealous of Makibi's great talents and burdened him with various difficult tasks that would expose him and cause him to die of shame. One of these tasks was to defeat a Chinese expert in the game of go, which Makibi did not then know. He was supposedly locked in a room where he was visited by the ghost of Abe no Nakamaro who had already been put to death by the Chinese.
In fact Nakamaro did not even die until 770 at the age of 72, and far from being done away with by the Chinese, he was incorporated as a respected official into the Chinese aristocracy. He stayed there till the end of his life.
But in the story his ghost taught Makibi the rules of go by displaying a go board on the ceiling at night. When the day came to play the Chinese expert, the result was a draw, but Makibi had the presence of mind surreptitiously to swallow one of the opponent's prisoners and so win the game by one point.
It is odd that Oe could come up with such fabrication, as he was part of a family who were hereditary scholars of Chinese in the Japanese court. Still, the story is important because it shows that the rules then in force were territory rules (i.e. prisoners have to be retained), confirming Chinese records that these were the rules used in China at that time.
The story lingers on today, with echoes such as the reason for the banishment of Fujiwara no Sai in Hikaru no Go (his rival at the Heian court filched one of his prisoners to win a crucial game). But it inspired earlier artists and writers, too.
The Edo scroll Kibi Daijin Nyuutou Emaki, or Scroll Illustrating the Lord Kibi's Visit to China, which is now in the Boston Fine Arts Museum, expands on this story by showing the Chinese, having administered an emetic to Makibi, unsuccessfully examining his faeces for the missing stone.
Another notable contribution was by the Sramana priest Seiyo 沙門誓誉 who wrote the Abe no Nakamaro Nyuutouki 安部仲麿入唐記 (Record of Abe no Nakamaro's Visit to Tang China). Apart from spawning another legend, that go came to Japan thanks to Nakamaro (even though he never returned), this book changed the story substantially. Instead of Makibi swallowing the stone, it was the wife Longchang 隆昌 of the Chinese expert 玄東 Xuandong who swallowed one of Makibi's stones when she realised Makibi was going to win by one point, and so the game ended in a tie. This mid-Edo story became so popular that it in turn spawned senryu (humorous poems) such as:
呑む時は妻目を白く黒くする
Nomu toki wa tsuma me wo shiroku kuroku suru
When swallowing, the wife's eyes turn white and black.
帰朝した当座一人で打って見せ
Kichou shita touza hitori de utte mise
Returning from abroad, for the time being try playing alone.
This, of course, is the version that Hayashi Genbi latched on to. In this version, the slight against the Chinese is reduced to the level of the master who needs to save face, rather than accusations of a diplomatic onslaught by the Chinese court.
The truth is that, whatever faults the Tang court may have had, they welcomed a go player who was said to have begun life as a firewood collector - that is what Wang Jixin's name means. They honoured Abe no Nakamaro and made him part of their own aristocracy. And they welcomed a Korean as a court go master. The Tang capital, Chang'an (itself famously likened to a go board) was the centre of the most cosmopolitan place on earth, the major stop on the eastern end of the Silk Road. It is no surprise it could offer a warm welcome to a Korean, whose story we now turn to.