Igo Hatsuyo-ron

By Inoue Dosetsu Inseki

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Details show/hide

Title	Igo Hatsuyo-ron
Author	Inoue Dosetsu Inseki
Translator	Sydney W. K. Yuan
Publisher	Yutopian Enterprises
Codes	y16, PAY16
Date	Nov-96
ISBN	1-889554-02-2
Pages	196
Dimensions	8 1/2. x 5 1/2. - 217mm x 140mm
Publisher's URL	https://www.yutopian.com/yutop/cat?product=PAY16

Go - Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Territory through Connection and Influence. Each player seeks to discover the strategy and tactics necessary to acquire the most territory. Ideally each move should pose multiple threats to create or destroy Life, Connection, Influence and/or Territory.

Igo Hatsuyo-ron (Explore the Go World), written in 1713, is hailed as the highest authority on life and death problems (Tsume Go). The title of the book came from the perception of the ancient Japanese players on go and means to explore the concealed technique associated with each go position. The book contains 183 problems of which the first 63 problems will be found in this Volume one of Igo Hatsuyo-ron.

Igo Hatsuyo-ron was written by the highest authority at the time, the fourth generation of the House of Inoue, Dosetsu Inseki. It was the most advanced text book devised to nurture the successor to the Head of the Inoue School. After the book was written, the House of Inoue established a rigorous security system to prevent the book from being stolen by other Schools. The book was regarded as a great treasure and the content of the book was kept confidential, not only from outsiders, but also from the general students within the Inoue School. Only a handful of potential candidates had the luxury of studying this book under the direct instruction of the Head, tackling one problem at a time. The tradition of keeping the secret within thefamilypersisted until recently.

Among all the life and death problems in the literature, there is none that exceeds the level of Igo Hatsuyo-ron. It sets the landmark between amateur and professional players.

In this first Chinese edition, in order to accommodate amateur readers at the intermediate level, the reader is guided from failure to the correct solution with increased complexity. At the same time, the reader can also experience and appreciate the method and procedure professionals use to tackle problems.

For amateur players, most of the problems in this book look hopelessly impossible! However do not give up. Read the comments carefully and patiently go through the illustrations. After detailed discussion, all the problems are simplified and become easier to comprehend.

Contents show/hide

Problem	1	. . . . . .	1	Problem	33	. . . . . .	94
Problem	2	......	2	Problem	34	......	97
Problem	3	......	5	Problem	35	......	99
Problem	4	......	7	Problem	36	......	102
Problem	5	......	10	Problem	37	......	104
Problem	6	......	15	Problem	38	......	105
Problem	7	......	18	Problem	39	......	110
Problem	8	......	20	Problem	40	......	113
Problem	9	......	21	Problem	41	......	117
Problem	10	......	23	Problem	42	......	121
Problem	11	......	25	Problem	43	......	125
Problem	12	......	27	Problem	44	......	126
Problem	13	......	29	Problem	45	......	129
Problem	14	......	32	Problem	46	......	132
Problem	15	......	35	Problem	47	......	134
Problem	16	......	38	Problem	48	......	139
Problem	17	......	41	Problem	49	......	142
Problem	18	......	42	Problem	50	......	143
Problem	19	......	46	Problem	51	......	150
Problem	20	......	51	Problem	52	......	152
Problem	21	......	53	Problem	53	......	156
Problem	22	......	56	Problem	54	......	159
Problem	23	......	58	Problem	55	......	163
Problem	24	......	62	Problem	56	......	166
Problem	25	......	68	Problem	57	......	169
Problem	26	......	70	Problem	58	......	172
Problem	27	......	72	Problem	59	......	175
Problem	28	......	74	Problem	60	......	177
Problem	29	......	84	Problem	61	......	181
Problem	30	......	85	Problem	62	......	188
Problem	31	......	89	Problem	63	......	191
Problem	32	......	92

Reviews show/hide

Review by David Carlton show/hide

Review Author	David Carlton	Reviewer Strength	1 kyu
Author's Email	carlton@bactrian.org	website	http://www.bactrian.org/~carlton/

This is a classical Japanese collection of life and death problems. It was written by Inoue Dosetsu Inseki and given to other members of the house of Inoue to study. They kept its contents a closely guarded secret; fortunately, a few copies were preserved and have been published in various editions.

The whole collection contains 183 problems; Yutopian has as of yet only published the first volume, containing 63 problems. The problems are quite hard, and you shouldn't treat it like a traditional life and death book. You should by all means try to solve the problems yourself, but don't get at all discouraged if you find that the problems are too difficult for you to solve by yourself. You are in good company: in fact, several of the problems had incorrect solutions published in earlier editions of this work. After you've tried as much as you want to solve each problem, you can go on to the solution. Each solution has several diagrams, often first showing a couple of incorrect solutions to the problem and then breaking up the correct solution into several stages and going through several variations of the solution. The solution then ends with a summary, telling what the result of the problem is and what the diagrams are, and gives you some "food for thought and lessons learned" which gives you something to think of about the problem.

I haven't yet read through this book; I've only looked at it a bit. I suspect that you have to be in the right sort of mood to read this book, but that if you pay attention to it then it will be rewarding. I'm certainly glad that Yutopian has published it: books like this help you realize that there is a history to this game and that it didn't start with the founding of Ishi Press. Like I said above, Yutopian is planning to publish the remaining two-thirds of this work; I hope that enough people buy it to encourage them to do so.