As previewed last month, here is my interview with John Fairbairn. One of the most prolific go writers in English (only Richard Bozulich can compare), and certainly the most prolific writer in delving into the game's history. He continues working on three initiatives. First, his translations of classical Chinese works, which he terms "The Museum of Go Theory.”
The Museum of Go Theory - all available on Amazon.
Second, he still maintains the GoGoD game collection and database, available at https://gogodonline.co.uk .
Third is his "Go Wisdom” theory, which he will fully explain later. Basically he challenges the reader of his game collections to visualize variations, instead of spoon-feeding a diagram. Additionally, he indexes various go concepts, so you can study "Forcing Moves”, for example, across different games, different players and even different centuries.
My hope is that you will humor, or as John would write, humour me, and apply this studious spirit to this lengthy blog, and further hope you will find it as rewarding as I have found John's writings.
Question: How did you first get interested in Go?
"I can't remember clearly, but I was about 18 and had been a fairly high-level chess player. It was probably stimulus from a well-known book by R. C. Bell (Board Games from Many Civilisations, I think), and I can also remember then going into the town reference library to look at Falkener's mostly unreadable book he cited. I can't remember any reason for special attraction to the game, but I was good at pattern recognition in languages, and maybe that spilled over. My memory is that I got to 2-dan in about six months, so I must have enjoyed the game.
Falkener's unreadable book from 1892.
"I lived in the far north of the country and only had one opponent, to whom I gave 9 stones. I later played at university, but again giving huge handicaps. The only way I got good games was by visits to London. I got free passes because my father worked on the railway, but it was an 8-hour trip one way in those days, returning on the night mail train to save on a hotel. With the exception of John Barrs and Colin Irvine I struggled to get a game at the London club – nobody wanted to play even low-handicap games in those days. I therefore drifted away from the game, and of course getting married and having to work for a living put the tin hat on it as a serious hobby."
Comment: 2 dan in 6 months is amazing progress, particularly back in those days.
"I would stress that 2-dan then was not anything as strong as it is now. But since I had to learn almost exclusively from Japanese go magazines, and not from playing weak amateurs, I'd argue that I had the best tuition."
Question: Can you share some of your background, particularly the parts that armed you with the skills to be such a ….go historian?
"I don't consider myself a go historian. Other people call me that and I go along with it for convenience, but I consider myself a go journalist or go writer. I concentrate on games of the past simply because more has been written about them, and because it's a way of avoiding copyright problems. Obviously, to a large extent it's also a reflection of the difficulty I had in finding chances to play, which meant I turned to books. An interest in Japanese handily coincided with that."
Question: Just how good are your Japanese, Chinese and Korean?
"My degree languages were French and Russian, but I started teaching myself Japanese at university after finding a wonderful book in the library. John Barrs had given me one of those small booklets of a game commentary you used to get with Kido and I was desperate to read it. When I started work as a translator in a huge electrical engineering company, I virtually never used French or Russian. 80% of my work was German and much of the rest was Spanish. I ended up doing over 30 languages for money. That tends to make people gasp but it's quite normal for translators – remember it's just translating, not speaking. Being deaf since infancy, a spoken language was always a problem for me anyway, but I suppose it made me focus on the written word even more, and that paid off for me.
"My big break at work was making friends with the head of the metallurgy department as he was a fellow Scout leader. When I casually mentioned I knew Japanese his eyes lit up. There was soon a queue around the block of scientists wanting me to translate Japanese technical papers. This was at a time when Japan was beginning to emerge as an economic and technological powerhouse. It was said at that time that there were only five people in the whole country capable of doing technical translations from Japanese reliably (dictionaries were almost non-existent). I became proficient in technical work simply because I was lucky that I had so many great scientists and engineers at work happy to explain their work to me, with visits round factories and labs. Somehow, word also got round to the local university and they were desperate to have Japanese on their curriculum. I ended up being recruited to teach a course to naval architect PhDs that enabled them to read Japanese shipbuilding texts in 49 hours.
Translated by John Fairbairn
"I came across Chinese almost by accident. People would send me Chinese texts for translation, thinking they were in Japanese. I did them anyway. But being in London, I also had special access (through being a staff member at Newcastle University) to the library at the London School of African and Oriental Studies - SOAS) and that was on my way home from wherever I was in London, so I spent a lot of time there. I had some interest in classical Chinese through go history and I had the good fortune to make friends with a professor of Chinese at SOAS. Apart from helping me with Chinese, he gave me one of my most treasured possessions – the 13-volume Chinese-Japanese dictionary by Morohashi. I have over 300 dictionaries, but that is almost the only one I ever use nowadays.
Some of John's dictionaries, including the Morohashi. Love me a bookshelf!
Copyright John Fairbairn, use only by written permission
"I don't read Korean fluently, but I have no trouble with the grammar (it's like Japanese) and I can read it easily enough with the help of a dictionary."
Question: I will detail your many works with pics throughout this interview, and I know it might be like picking a favorite child - but do you have a favorite of the books you have written?
"Not really. I've never been interested either in the popular games of picking your world team of 11 best football players, and the like. I've done about 50 books, I think, half available on Amazon. I suppose the most influential for me, in go terms, has been Kamakura, but probably the ones I have been most pleased to do are the all-text ones, the biographies of Shuei and Segoe – simply because they show the western go world, in depth, aspects of go that would escape them otherwise. That's the journalist in me, rather than the go player. Any book takes a lot of effort, so I have a strong attachment to all of them – without that I wouldn't have done them in the first place."
A smattering of John's efforts.
Question: Perhaps this is also hard, and perhaps a chance to reference one of your latest works - but do you have a favorite go player?
"Again, that's a question not entirely compatible with my character, but if push came to shove and I had to choose one, the most fascinating as a player would perhaps be Huang Longshi. As a person, it has to be Segoe."
John's biography of Segoe Kensaku - effortful practice demands that you look up the title's meaning... I had to...
Comment: My favorite will always be Shuko - Fujisawa Hideyuki - what are your thoughts on him?
"I read his biography with great distaste. Being a great go player doesn't excuse not being a nice person."
Two heroes together, mine, Shuko on far right, and John's, Segoe, third from left, in 1971, a year before his death.
Comment: Of course, you are right, but for me it is Shuko's combination of the human and the genius that fascinates me. I will offer another favorite - Abe Yoshiteru 9 dan. It seems he is in every tournament final picture for 30 years, he struck me as having a true amateur's love of the game.
"Abe's jolly Santa face certainly made an impression on me, but he never registered as a player. He was, however, the one that introduced Cho Hun-hyeon to Fujisawa Hideyuki, and was also responsible, by getting Cho to play gambling go, for getting Segoe to kick Cho out of his house. Kids, never trust Santa!"
Abe's Santa face peeking out behind Yamabe's mane of white hair - from Kido Yearbook
Question: In so many ways, your books suggest you are a traditionalist, yet you were quite early in putting much of your research in a digital form - particularly GoGod. And your recent works have often embraced artificial intelligence. What are your thoughts on the AI revolution?
"Remember first that it's GoGoD (Games of Go on Disc, originally, now Games of Go on Download.) Mark Hall and I made no claims to divinity.
"I suppose I'd have been happier if AlphaGo had not existed, but my objection to AI is really an objection to the way so many respond to it as a cargo cult. I worked for several years with a team producing the world's first shogi computer, so I clearly have no objection to exploring board games by digital means."
Comment: For me, the great shame of AI is that we have lost something as go fans. I recall the great style debates - like Kobayashi v. Takemiya - somehow it is just not as fun when we have an absolute answer.
"I've always been mistrustful of amateurs talking about go styles, so I never joined in those debates anyway. My interest in people like Kobayashi and Takemiya was more focused on their personalities and what they got up to. For example, why did K and T not get on at all well? And as I see it, AI does not (yet) impact on that side of life. So, I personally have not lost anything there. But I do think AI has made too many amateurs forget there is more long-term fun in being go fans rather than go nerds."
John with notable AlphaGo victim Ke Jie, 9 dan.
Copyright John Fairbairn, use only by written permission
Question: I would be remiss to not give you a chance to briefly explain your "Go Wisdom” initiative?
"'Effortful practice' and '10,000 hours' are buzzwords at present, and I latched on to them for my own selfish reasons. I didn't want to spend hours and hours making go variation diagrams, and I noticed that old Japanese and Chinese books didn't use them either. It clearly did the oriental players of yore no harm, and as I became more familiar with the worlds they lived in, I became convinced that it was actually highly beneficial. The old formats forced effortful study on the players. By having to visualise a sequence on the board rather than taking a glance at a variation diagram, players improve their equivalent of a go muscle memory. By being slowed down, they learn to appreciate the nuances better. By being slowed down, you tend to stop and think more. But what happens when you stop and think and still can't find an answer to your questions? So, to my format of using letters on the board in place of variation diagrams, I added a Go Wisdom appendix to several of my books, and in there you will find general advice on a whole range of go concepts that may steer you towards an answer, or at the very least widen your appreciation of go's richness as you play over the game again – effortful study, remember. Crucially, in my view, this includes old Chinese theory. I don't know whether it's worked out, but I've had some positive comments and no complaints."
Some of John's game collections, many featuring his Go Wisdom format
Question: As you no doubt know, Mt. Rushmore contains images of 4 of our Presidents - Who would you place on the "Mt. Rushmore of Western Go Publishing?”
"That's easy. Richard Bozulich. My memory of first meeting him (he doesn't recall it though!) was when I was visiting the London go club in my very early days, and he was one of the rare players who would play me there. It was a one-off because he was on his way to Tokyo, where the rest became go history! Apart from go, I dealt with him a lot via George Hodges and shogi, and whenever George and I went to Japan, Richard would find time to take us to places like go board makers and print houses where we saw how go and shogi pages were put together by compositors using old-fashioned fonts (which meant a lot to me as a journalist). So, quite apart from his long, long, long and continuing record of publishing go books – including in the days when it was a high-risk venture, I would class him as one of the people who kept me going.
"One story I liked from Richard shows how different a publishing world it was then. Books had to be printed en masse to get a sensible unit price. Books are heavy. They have to be stored somewhere. Richard stored his at home in Chigasaki. Until a very irate downstairs neighbour started complaining in alarm about the way his ceiling was bowing down. Heavy groups are not good in go.
"I'm sure Stuart Dowsey, Richard's Ishi Press partner, deserves a Rushmore place, too, although he hasn't had the longevity Richard has. But Stuart did found the original London Go Centre (where Mark and I first met). His wife and mine became friends and both our daughters used to play together. But the closure of the Go Centre led to Stuart having to follow a path other than go. Nevertheless, Stuart's venture was the inspiration for Mark Hall wishing to leave his estate to found a new London Centre, which has successfully come about recently.
"I am very taken with the long-term knock-on effects I have described. They have played a big part in all my life, and so I have been grateful to all the people in my past who have had influences on me they couldn't possibly have predicted. One reason I was so committed to the Segoe book was that in him I saw someone who had exactly the same response as I did to past influences and kindnesses.
"If it comes within what you mean by publishing, I think there should also probably be a place for Anders Kierulf. Being the inventor of the sgf format is probably enough for him to be there, but his high-quality interactive SmartGo e-books also deserve recognition."
Question: I think perhaps Bill Cobb might merit a place as well with his efforts with Slate and Shell. If we focus on writers - in my view, James Davies gave us the tools, John Power gave us the reference works, and you simply made it fun. Your ability to make us feel like we are in the room when the great games are played is amazing. I know you are simply going to say it is the journalist in you - but I am fascinated by the word pictures you paint - what are your sources for all this detail?
"I use books, magazines and newspapers. I try to visit the places concerned, and in several cases I have been able to meet or interview the people concerned. I don't add anything to that from my imagination. But what I try to do is explain things that westerners might not be familiar with. If I detect a classical allusion (I mean to classical Chinese or classical Japanese), I will explain it and its significance, even though again it is not in the original go source (except as a quotation; e.g. if the text said 'Homer nods' I would explain who Homer was, where the writer said this and why). I am reasonably well clued up on the Oriental classical poems and philosophy texts, but again I try to add personal experience to the mixture. For example, I recently took a grandson to Japan and we visited the Basho museum in the middle of ninja country. When the museum guide realised I already knew quite a bit about Basho, he pulled out extra items that were not normally seen by the public. More grist to my mill. Where something like Basho's poems come up (he referenced go in some poems), I might delve into European history or culture to find a meaningful simile or metaphor. This is just a standard journalistic approach, I'd say. I don't feel I am doing anything special, except perhaps adding an oriental dimension (and occasionally a Scots dimension – lang may yer lum reek!)."
Question: John Power and James Davies love playing go, as did T Mark Hall, and I have played games with them all. But not you. Just how much do you play go?
"I think I have indicated already several factors that inhibited me from actually playing go. I think it has now been several decades since I last played a face-to-face – a long time certainly. Even before then I would go through phases when I might go to a go club or tournaments regularly, but with my hearing problems I found the hubbub of different voices difficult to cope with and so I would drift away again. I have tried online play but I don't like it much, and I spend too much time at the computer without that."
Comment: Wow, I consider us kindred spirits but we diverge there, I play all the time. With all your work on these books, and forgetting bad habits by not playing - you might be pro strength by now!
"I have been told by some pros I am 5-dan or even 6-dan, and even had an argument with a Korean female pro who took umbrage when I disagreed with her assessment. She was a pro teacher, she said, and she knew what she was talking about. I pointed out that I made too many silly mistakes (and that's all I would make nowadays!), but her argument was that that was something easily taken care of. It was the deeper understanding that counts. But my retort to that was I am certainly strong enough to know how weak I am. One of my favourite quotations has always been Go Seigen's 'He's very weak – he just a 4-dan pro.' I think that's the right perspective. If you broke a leg, would you go to a 7-dan amateur physiotherapist or a 9-dan pro surgeon?"
Question: What are your interests outside of go?
"I probably spend more time on Scottish country dancing than on go. Five days a week, usually. It's quite a big thing where I live. I also watch a lot of ballet. I'm trying to make up for all the years lost when I was young and the only time you could see ballet was once a year when the Royal Ballet came to town. I also have a few places to visit in Europe on my bucket list. I went round the world a lot with Mrs Thatcher and her ministers but I missed out on parts of Europe.
John taking a break from Scottish country dancing with a brace of Yankee lasses.
"I have a passion for baseball, too – one I shared with Mark Hall – and was in the process of trying to visit every MLB ballpark until – about halfway through – my wife fell ill and needed me at home."
John and the author at a Frederick Keys minor league baseball game
Question: What new books do you have in the pipeline?
"For a long time I have been working on a book on Huang Longshi. All the research is done, and I've even typed up about half. That commitment shows I really want to do it. But it's so hard to keep motivated when so little interest is shown in old Chinese go here. My other Chinese books have (I think) all sold less than a dozen copies each, whereas Go Seigen books, or Japanese books in general, do reasonably well despite this being the age of video bling. I have thought about re-issuing some books that are no longer in print after Slate & Shell retreated from the paper market. But it's very tedious work with virtually no return."
Question: Go is a game of connections, not just on the board, but with people. It really amazes me how it forms friendships - even based on just a few face to face meetings - do you share this feeling?
"Yes. I have already mentioned an aspect of this in describing how almost random meetings lead to being influenced enough to follow new courses in life or sustain old ones. I'll embarrass you by mentioning another instance. I found out by accident that you had sponsored a reprint of Kamakura. I say 'by accident' but I hasten to add that Bill Cobb probably did mention it to me when I met him in Santa Barbara. As happens a lot for me, I expect I didn't hear it, or hear it properly, in the hubbub of a tournament. After all, at that stage, your name – or even your existence - would have meant absolutely nothing to me. But now that I know about it, it is one of the things that keeps me going."
Comment: Thank you for those kind words - your books keep me GOing as well.
british baseball fan -
yankee toffee, forever
bamboo connection
- Keith L. Arnold, hka, January 2024