Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/227

Rh "great a distance as possible betwixt himself and the home police. Likewise the Globe-trotter locustus, the species that travels in swarms, perpetually dragged around the universe by Cook and the likes of Cook &hellip; Last, but not least, just a word for the Globe-trotter amabilis, a species which is fortunately not wanting and which is always welcome. I mean the old friends and the new, whose memory lives fresh in the minds of our small community, connected as it is with the recollection of happy hours spent together. Their own hearts will tell them that not they, but others, are pointed at in the foregoing—perhaps partly too harsh—description.'"

 Go, often with little appropriateness termed "checkers" by European writers, is the most popular of the indoor pastimes of the Japanese,—a very different affair from the simple game known to Europeans as Goban or Gobang, properly the name of the board on which Go is played. It is the great resource of most of the visitors to the hot springs and other health resorts, being often played from morning till night, save for the intervals devoted to eating and bathing. Clubs and professors of the art are found in all the larger cities, where, too, blind players may occasionally be met with. Go may with justice be considered more difficult than chess, its wider field affording more numerous ramifications. The game was introduced into Japan from China by Shimomichi-no-Mabi, commonly known as Kibi Daijin, who flourished during the reign of the Emperor Shōmu (A.D. 724—756). In the middle of the seventeenth century, a noted player, called Hon-im-bo, was summoned from Kyōto to entertain the Chinese ambassador then at the court of the Shōgun, from which time forward special Go players were always retained by the Shōguns of the Tokugawa dynasty.

Go is played on a square wooden board. Nineteen straight lines crossing each other at right angles make three hundred and sixty-one me, or crosses, at the points of intersection. These may be occupied by a hundred and eighty white and a hundred