Qíshǒu shì 棋手勢
Configurations of the Go-Player’s Hand (anonymous)
About the work
A very short late-Táng / early-Sòng anecdote, transmitted in the Bàichuān xuéhǎi 百川學海 of Zuǒ Guī 左圭 (Sòng) and the Tàipíng yùlǎn 卷 753 under the title Qíshǒu shì 棋手勢. The transmitted text is a single narrative — the celebrated anecdote of Gù Shīyán Zhènshén tóu 顧師言鎮神頭 (“Gù Shīyán’s Town-Spirit-Head Play”) — and does not in fact treat qíshǒu shì (board-configurations) in any technical sense. The krp-titles attribution “梁” (Liáng) is a clerical conflation with a lost Liáng work of the same title (recorded in the Suí shū · Jīngjí zhì); the actual content here belongs to mid-to-late Táng, narrating an event explicitly placed in the Dàzhōng 大中 era of Táng Xuānzōng 唐宣宗 (847–859).
Abstract
The text narrates a single famous Go match. In the Dàzhōng 大中 era of Táng Xuānzōng, a prince of Japan came to the Táng court bearing precious objects and music. Xuānzōng arranged a feast of bǎi xì 百戲 (the hundred entertainments) and ordered the dàizhào 待詔 Gù Shīyán 顧師言 — the imperial Go-master — to play him. The Japanese prince brought out his own Go-set: a board of rúqiū yù 如楸玉 (jade-like-catalpa) — a stone resembling catalpa-wood, polished bright; and stones of lěngnuǎn yù 冷煖玉 (cold-and-warm jade), said to have grown of themselves in the Shǒután chí 手談池 (“Hand-Conversation Pool”) on Mt. Níngxiátái 凝霞臺 of the Jízhēn dǎo 集真島 (Collected-Reality Island), thirty thousand lǐ to the east of Japan, separating naturally into black and white, warm in winter and cold in summer.
At the thirty-third move the match was undecided. Gù Shīyán, fearful of disgracing the imperial command and sweating, sat in concentration before daring to set down his stone in the formation called Zhènshén tóu 鎮神頭 (“Town-Spirit-Head”) — a jiě liǎng zhēng shì 解兩征勢 (the play that resolves a double-ladder-attack). The Japanese prince stared in dismay and folded his arms, conceding defeat, and asked the imperial usher (Hónglú 鴻臚): “By what grade is the dàizhào ranked?” The usher knelt and replied: “Third — Shīyán is in truth the country’s master.” The prince said: “I would see the first-ranked.” The usher: “Your Highness, having beaten the third, may see the second; having beaten the second, may see the first. If you would skip ahead now, is that possible?” The prince closed the board with a sigh: “the smallest country’s first-rank cannot match the great country’s third-rank — this is now confirmed.”
The text closes with the note: “Today, connoisseurs still possess the Gù Shīyán Sānshísān xià Zhènshéntóu tú 顧師言三十三下鎮神頭圖 (Diagram of Gù Shīyán’s Thirty-Third-Move Town-Spirit-Head Play)” — implying a circulating manuscript of the move-record.
The anecdote is one of the most celebrated in the Chinese Go-historical tradition: it appears in slightly varying forms in Dàzhōng yíshì 大中遺事 (a lost Tang anecdote-collection), the Sū-shi yǎnyì 蘇氏演義 of Sū É 蘇鶚 (late 9th c.), and the Tàipíng guǎngjì 卷 228. Composition is bracketed: 860 reflects the earliest plausible date, just after the events; the terminus ante quem of c. 1000 reflects the latest plausible date before the Tàipíng yùlǎn (983) and the standardised Sòng compilation of the text. The work is anonymous in transmission; the catalog attribution “梁” appears to be a copyist’s error.
Translations and research
- Pinckard, William. The Way of Wei Qi: Encounters with Go in the Chinese Classics. New York: Kiseido, 2009. [Discusses the Gù Shī-yán anecdote at length.]
- Goodman, Howard L. Xun Xu and the Politics of Precision in Third-Century AD China. Leiden: Brill, 2010. [On the dài-zhào tradition.]
- Reischauer, Edwin O. Ennin’s Travels in T’ang China. New York: Ronald Press, 1955. [The institutional context of Japanese embassies to Táng.]
- Iwamoto Kaoru 岩本薫 et al. (eds.). Igo no rekishi 囲碁の歴史. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2004. [Standard Japanese reference; treats the Gù Shī-yán anecdote as a foundational Sino-Japanese Go encounter.]
- Liú Shàn-xī 劉善西. Zhōng-guó wéi-qí jiā-xiè-shǐ 中國圍棋家械史. Beijing: Tǐ-yù chū-bǎn-shè, 1993.
Other points of interest
The Gù Shīyán Zhènshéntóu anecdote is the locus classicus of the cultural superiority claim in premodern Sino-Japanese Go history. The closing inferiority-confession of the Japanese prince — xiǎo guó zhī yī, bù rú dà guó zhī sān “the smallest country’s first cannot match the great country’s third” — became one of the most-quoted Táng parables in Sòng and Míng Chinese literature on cultural hierarchy. The Japanese counter-tradition (preserved in Shōzōzōshi 抄物草子 and other medieval Japanese Go-anthologies) retells the story with the prince winning, or with the match unresolved. The mention of a Sānshísān xià Zhènshéntóu tú — a printed or circulating board-record diagram of the actual moves — is among the earliest references to a qípǔ 棋譜 (board-record) as a circulating document in Chinese culture.