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 VI

“JOSEKI” AND OPENINGS

the earliest times the Japanese have studied the opening of the game. Especially since the foundation of the Go Academy there have been systematic treatises on this subject, and for keen and thorough analysis, these treatises have nothing to fear from a comparison with the analogous works on Chess openings. There is, however, a difference between the opening of the game in Chess and the opening in Go, because in the latter case the play can commence in each of the four corners successively, and therefore, instead of having one opening, it might be said that there are four.

The Japanese masters usually overcome this difficulty by treating a corner separately, as if it were uninfluenced by the position or the possibility of playing in the adjacent corners, and in their treatises they have indicated where the first stones in such an isolated corner can advantageously be played. These stones are called “Joseki.” As a matter of fact, these separate analyses or “Joseki” differ slightly from the opening of the game as actually played, because it is customary in opening the game to skip from one corner to another, and the moment a few stones are played in any corner the situation in the adjacent corners is thereby influenced. It is due to this fact also that in their treatises on the “Joseki” the Japanese writers do not continue the Rh