Page:Smith - The game of go.djvu/146

120 as far as we are accustomed to in our works on Chess. While this method of studying the openings persists to the present time, one of the greatest of the Japanese masters, Murase Shuho, compiled a series of openings which correspond more closely to our Chess openings; that is to say, the game is commenced, as in actual play, all over the board, and is not confined to the study of one corner as in the case of the conventional "Joseki." Korschelt, in his work on the game, inserts about fifty of these openings by Murase Shuho, with notes that were prepared by the Japanese master especially for the use of foreigners, and I have selected a few of these in addition to the collection of "Joseki" which we will first consider.

The work from which my "Joseki" have been selected was compiled by Inouye Hoshin, and published in November, 1905. It was originally written for the "Nippon Shimbun," a newspaper published in Tokio. Of course, the annotations accompanying these "Joseki" are not the original ones from the Japanese text. Many of the things which I point out would be regarded as trite and obvious to a good player, and my annotations are intended solely to aid beginners in understanding some of the reasons for the moves given. It must also be understood that the series of "Joseki" which I have inserted falls far short of completeness. In a Japanese work on the game there would be at least five times as many.

Although the "Joseki" have been studied by the Japanese masters from the earliest times, it does not mean that the ordinary player in Japan is familiar with them; just as in this country we find a majority of Chess players have a very limited acquaintance with the Chess openings, so in