American Go E-Journal » Go Art

In Episode 171 (“The Coming of the Tiger”, episode 30, season 5, available in streaming video on Netflix) of the classic TV Western Have Gun – Will Travel, the hero, Paladin (Richard Boone) is shown playing a game of go in San Francisco, reports David Saunders. “To the dismay of his Japanese opponent, Paladin announces that the position is seki,” Saunders writes. “The game is interrupted by a crisis and resumed at the end of the episode.  I was amazed to see this in a national TV show from c. 1961.”
Screenshot at left courtesy Paul Barchilon

Recent go spottings in films by EJ readers include Dangerous Moves,  a 1984 French film (La Diagonale de fou) about a couple of chess grandmasters. “At minute 20, the elder is shown in the evening playing go with someone,” reports Bob Barber. “The board position looks quite cluttered, and they seem to be placing stones at random while talking.” And None Redmond just saw A Taste of Tea, a 2004 film directed by Katsuhito Ishii that features go as a major part of the plot and has been called a “surreal” version of Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. EJ Managing Editor Chris Garlock recently rediscovered Sanjuro, the great 1962 Akira Kurosawa film starring the magnificent Toshirō Mifune (r) in an exciting – and quite funny — sequel to Yojimbo, with Mifune reprising his role as a wandering ronin who in one scene halfway through the film naps next to a goban and then perches atop it to instruct his young samurai. All three films are available on Netflix.

”In chapter 12 of their book A Thousand Plateaus- Capitalism and Schizophrenia,” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari use go in opposition to chess as a model to begin describing their concept of ‘nomadology’  (pp.352-53),” writes Marc Willhite. “Not the lightest reading to be sure, but it certainly gave me a new appreciation for the qualities that make go the confounding and fascinating game that it is.”

“Recently I went to see the movie ‘The Warlords’ at a local arts movie house,” writes Les Lanphear III in San Diego, CA. “It was shot in China and Hong Kong in 2007. Of course there are battles and martial arts and a love triangle. Toward the end two of the Emperors’ officials are talking while playing go. They play a few moves but too quickly for me to get a layout of the position. The movie is set in the 1860s during the Taiping Rebellion.”

”Chapter 15 of Muriel Barbery’s engaging novel ‘The Elegance of the Hedgehog’ has an argument about the basics of go,” writes Franklyn L. Bullard. Hal Small adds that the 2006 French novel “presents an overview and a very accurate description of the nature of our beloved game.  It’s also a drop-dead funny book with scathing social commentary.”