Images of olden times

I think I posted this myself earlier in the thread. Or perhaps that was to the OSR discord. Either way, this brilliant thread needs a bump.

Friend of mine found this article about the coats Japanese firemen wore in the 19th century:

This image in particular caught my eye:

Fireman’s coat (19th century) decorated with a spider hovering over an abadoned Go board. The scene is from the story of the warrior-hero Minamoto no Yorimitsu (948–1021) who, once when sick, was visited by an evil priest in the guise of a giant spider. Yorimitsu saw through the disguise and attacked the spider priest, and his four attendants (who were playing a game of Go while guarding him) leapt up to track the intruder back to his den

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I want one!!

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I don’t know how old these bowls are, but they’re a fine excuse to bump this even finer thread.

Taken from the World of Go channel on Twitter.

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You know what, I could spam wonderful pics and farm hearts for the rest of the day on the pics from this Twitter channel but I’d be doing it a disservice.

Get thee over to https://twitter.com/worldofgo

PS. this is now my desktop background ~~~~~~(==^owo^)=

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Discourse can embed a tweet like this (just paste in a direct link to it)

This way you can highlight and share content, while also giving credit and maybe generating some clicks for them.

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Go no neko goneko, or what was that old story?

Not sure what you mean… all I can think of from your sentence is neko to koneko no igo (cats’ and kittens’ Go).

There’s a story where the Emperor challenged a scholar. The Emperor wrote 子子子子子子子子子子子子 and the scholar read it correctly as ‘a cat’s child is a kitten, a lion’s child is a cub’.

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Related:

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That youtube comment

Minecraft Villagers when you refuse to buy their bread for 10 Emeralds

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Back to life, old friend!

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image

Crossposted from the post by @claire_yang at Visualize go this way, instantly make it 30 times easier to count - #41 by claire_yang

Perhaps she would provide some information about the image?

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It’s from the earliest known printed Go book called - 忘憂清樂集 (sort of translated to a collection that can make you carefree and happy, a sentence from a poem. It doesn’t just contain game records, but also theories and examples like modern tsumego problems). This particular image is taken from the original in-print version from the 12th century AD Song Dynasty (the book itself is currently in the Chinese National Library, but was on exhibit many times)

It is a game played by 劉仲甫(Liu Zhongfu) as white and 王珏 (Wang Jue) as black at the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty around 11th century AD. Liu was 棋待诏 at the time. 棋待诏 is an official title whose job was to teach and as a companion to play Go with the Emperor, only for the best player of the whole empire (like the Meijin of Edo period Japan), got salaries and everything. All the good players would challenge him to get the title themselves, 王珏 was one of them.

And the game rules were a lot different than we have today, like group tax, crossed fixed starting stones placements, and white played first. Due to group tax, these old games would look strange to us, since it would be pretty bad to get cut off, with lots of early fighting and large moyo. It would usually be better to sacrifice a few stones to gain some big influence. And Liu was far better than Wang in this game I feel, almost like a teaching game, purposely gave his opponent many chances to live.

BTW, there is a theory that in ancient times in order to offset the first move advantage, there was some kind of weird komi system in place to penalized white, somewhat around 8 komi. The first mover gave a token captive to the opponent worth 3 units, and can earn one unit with 3 captives. So players would also be pretty aggressive in atari and capture.

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This section of this interesting Go blog has a bunch of pictures of older equipment and artifacts

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I found some life and death practices with 25 handicap stones game in a very old book “Self-studying Go” Vol 2, by Tamejiro Suzuki, 1931 (鈴木為次郎『囲碁独習』 第2巻, 日本棋院 1931).

Interesting to see how they taught beginners back then.


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image

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What is Cho Chikun telling us?

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Front cover of Abe Kamejiro’s 1918 Japanese book Tagaisen Joseki Shinpo (互先定石新法).

It can be read free and legally online here, on the website of the Japanese Diet Library.

(tagging @claire_yang for obvious reasons)

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うまくいったね, i.e. “It went great, didn’t it?”

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