History of Go

It was considered one of the four essential arts of a cultured Chinese scholar in antiquity and is described as a worthy pastime for a gentleman in the Analects of Confucius.

According to legend, the game was created as a teaching tool after the ancient Chinese Emperor Yao 堯 designed it for his son, Danzhu 丹朱, to learn discipline, concentration, and balance.

Another suggested genesis for the game is that Chinese warlords and generals used pieces of stone to map attacking positions.

Go's early history is debated, but there are myths about its existence, one of which assuming that Go was an ancient fortune telling device used by Chinese astrologers to simulate the universe's relationship to an individual.

[citation needed] Another common origin story is that the mythical sage Emperor Yao invented the game to educate his son and cultivate proper virtue.

[1] Chinese archaeologists have discovered a broken piece of a pottery go board from the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE – 24 CE) in Shaanxi Province.

The board was found in the ruins of a watchtower at the tombs of Emperor Jingdi and Empress Wang Zhi of the Western Han dynasty.

In 1954 a complete Go board made out of stone was found in a tomb dating to the Eastern Han dynasty (25–220) in Wangdu County, Hebei Province.

[9] In ancient China, Go had an important status among elites and was associated with ideas of self-cultivation, wisdom, and gentlemanly ideals.

During the Muromachi period (1336–1573), potentates employed semi-professional Go players, called Go-uchi (碁打ち) or Jouzu (上手) who competed against other clans.

The wave of Westernization and modernization accompanying the Meiji Restoration in 1868 caused the dissolution of the official iemoto Go system and a wane in general popularity for the game.

Despite its widespread popularity in East Asia, Go has been slow to spread to the rest of the world, unlike other games of ancient Asian origin, such as chess.

While pure analytical thought and the ability to plan many moves in advance are advantageous in chess, in Go a more intuitive approach based on pattern recognition and experience is stressed.

It was not until 2000 that a Westerner, Michael Redmond, achieved a professional 9 dan rating, the top rank awarded by East Asian Go associations.

For most of the 20th century, the Japan Go Association played a leading role in spreading Go outside East Asia, publishing the English-language magazine Go Review in the 1960s, establishing Go centers in the US, Europe and South America, and often sending professional teachers on tour to Western nations.

A ceramic 19 x 19 board preserved from the Sui dynasty .
Li Jing playing Go with his brothers. Painting by Zhou Wenju (fl. 942–961), Southern Tang dynasty.
Chinese Go players during the Ming dynasty , depicted on a painted screen by a Japanese artist of the Kanō school . Momoyama period , 16th century.
Japanese-American Farm Security Administration workers play go in Twin Falls, Idaho , during the 1940s. Asian immigration to the U.S. was a factor in the growth of the game in the Americas.