Tragic Vision in Kawabata's The Master of Go

Tragic Vision in Kawabata's The Master of Go Joseph H. Bourque Montana State University At first glance the application of the thoroughly Western dramatic concept of tragedy to an Oriental novel may seem to be critical madness. Both the genres and the traditions are jarringly incongruous: the process may seem a bit like trying to examine a flower with a sword. Yet, unlike most Japanese novels, The Master of Go1 seems to invite examination from the perspective of Western concepts. At its most accessible symbolic level the novel presents the Go match between the old Master, Shïïsai, and the young challenger , Otaké, as the objectification of a conflict between tradition and change in Japanese culture, a change intimately associated with Western ideas. Beyond that, the most fundamental level of that conflict is the confrontation of two completely different ways of understanding the nature of human existence at the moment when one is giving way to the other and while both are still vital enough to sustain the conflict's intensity: on the one hand, the traditional Japanese culture's organic view of human beings as emotional and subjective participants in the integrative process of experiencing a complex universe of which they are a functioning element; on the other hand, a systematic view of human beings as objective observers of the universe, categorizing, systematizing, and controlling their experience of a world from which they try to stand apart. The most obvious precedent for such a confrontation is to be found in the classical Greece of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., where the same kind of conflict took place between an organic, mythological view of humanity as part of the great cosmic cycle and the systematic view of humanity attempting rational control of its own destiny with the beginnings of theoretical science and the reflexive humanism of the Sophists. There, too, a transition occurred 1. Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1974). References will be to this translation and inserted in the text. 84ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW from the organic to the systematic at a moment when the conflict was still vital; the human anguish produced by that conflict is expressed in tragedy. The tragic flaw that brings about the hero's downfall is the assumption that he can control his own destiny through the exercise of logic and will, the attributes of rationality. From that limited perspective, the only real tragedy is Greek classical tragedy. Modern Western tragedy is not possible because the confrontation is no longer vital: we have become predominately rationalistic, and the memory of an organic conception of humanity is too dim to provoke a genuine conflict. Humanity still feels anguish , but it is the anxiety of the alienated hero. Yet, if the conflict can be found in its dynamic state once again, as it seems to be in The Master of Go, perhaps we can find there a modern literary equivalent to the Greek classical tragic vision. There can be little doubt that the implications of the Go match in Kawabata's novel are meant to extend to Japanese culture in general. The contestants are isolated, but their activities are being reported in the newspapers as events of national importance. The game itself is frequently referred to as an art form, and relationships are continually established with music, poetry, history, and the Japanese landscape,. It is inextricably entwined with the cultural tradition, the spirit, and the mentality of the Japanese people when Uragami, Kawabata's persona and narrator, plays a game of Go with an American on the train: One did not of course wish to take a game too seriously, and yet it was quite clear that playing Go with a foreigner was very different from playing Go with a Japanese. I wondered whether the point might be that foreigners were not meant for Go....One is of course rash to generalize from the single example of an American beginner, but perhaps the conclusion might be valid all the same that Western Go is wanting in spirit. The Oriental game has gone beyond game and test of strength and become a way of art...