The game has had ups and downs in China, where Confucious looked on it as a waste of time, Mao Zedong required his generals to study it, and the Cultural Revolution condemned it as a pastime of intellectuals.
It was taken to Japan 1,200 to 1,400 years ago, reportedly by Buddhist priests who had visited China. It seems to have shown up in Korea before Japan, but it is widely believed that in Japan the game came to its full potential.
Praised by the shogun Tokugawa, Go was studied by Japan's warrior class and eventually institutionalized in four "Go houses," where families developed and passed down Go techniques in the same way that other Japanese families developed and passed down techniques of sword-making or the samurai code. Go never faded from popularity in Japan; it spread to all levels of society and by the 18th century had attained a status equal to that of the famed tea ceremony.
For decades, Taiwanese and Korean players with great skill went to Japan to study the game. Now a system of professional competition has risen in those two countries, and masters are trained in their homeland. In China, Go climbed back to prominence after the Cultural Revolution, and an annual challenge called the China-Japan Super Go pits government-salaried Chinese players against the best Japan can offer, in a contest of rivalry more intense than that at any college-football bowl game.
Professionals, who study the game full-time under the tutelage of a master from childhood until their early twenties, play Go at its highest level. In ancient China, Go was one of the Four Arts, along with music, painting, and poetry, and in a professional game one can perceive the beauty of an art form.
Even today, a young Go scholar moves into the home of his or her master, or sensei, to train for the professional tournament circuit.
At first glance, the board may appear to be square, but it is not. The standard size is roughly 16 1/2 in. by 18 in. It is always slightly longer than it is wide, just enough to prevent perfect symmetry. Thus when a game is finished and the black and white stones almost cover the board, the round stones butt together, reflecting the nature of the game: two players use their respective stones to compete for territory on the surface of the board, staking out areas that they want to own, while the opponent tries to push and squeeze those areas in order to gain more territory for himself.
The white stones invade a black-bordered area; the black stones creep in under the edge of a white-bordered area; and vice versa. Having jostled and poked and intruded, the stones at game's end touch one another's edges, illustrating the battles won and lost, forming a map of the contest of two minds.
The Go board begins bare, like an empty canvas. The game begins to take form after 30 to 50 moves, when the board resembles an artist's pencil study prior to beginning a painting. When a game is finished, after 200 to 250 moves, the lines and groups of black and white form a record of two players' plans and ideas. One of the old names for Go translates as "hand conversation," and in fact a game is really a series of discussions and arguments about the choice of moves.
More than 25 million people currently play Go, most of them in the Far East. Europe may have as many as 100,000 players; the United States perhaps 20,000. Players from more than 30 countries compete in the annual World Amateur Go Championship. More than 200 players typically attend the U.S. Go Congress, which is held in a different city each year.