What Triggered Kawabata to Write The Master of Go: Wartime media and the last Honninbo championship match

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Other Title
  • 「本因坊名人引退碁観戦記」から小説『名人』へ -川端康成と戦時下における新聞のメディア戦略-
  • 「 ホンインボウ メイジン インタイ ゴ カンセンキ 」 カラ ショウセツ 『 メイジン 』 エ : カワバタ ヤスナリ ト センジカ ニ オケル シンブン ノ メディア センリャク

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Abstract

The novel The Master of Go was published in 1952 after 10 years' preparation by Yasunari Kawabata. In this novel he focuses on Shusai, a master of go, twenty-first in the Honninbo succession, who died in 1940. In 1938 the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun(now The Mainichi)and the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun sponsored the last Honninbo championship match and Kawabata was invited to report on the fourteen sessions in sixty-four serial installments. After Shusai' s death he was moved to write the novel, and based it on these reports. This paper looks at Kawabata' s writings, the history of old iemoto succession system, the dramatic defeat and the death of the old champion, the wartime popularity of the game, strategic actions by the media, and concludes that the novel symbolizes Shusai' s death as emblematic of a dying culture and the change from pre-modern to modern Japan.

8

KJ00010122119

Journal

  • GAKUEN

    GAKUEN 904 52-67, 2016-02-01

    東京 : 光葉会

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