Lasker learnt the rules of go from an article written by Oskar Korschelt, who brought the game to Europe after a 10 year stay in Japan. Why shouldn’t this have been Japanese rules?
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It was a joke. I can’t possibly imagine anyone thinking Japanese rules are “so elegant, organic and rigorously logical”… 
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He meant the basic gameplay not the edge cases lol
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I think I’ve played go under Japanese rules for about 2 decades while being blissfully unaware that rules enthousiasts were hotly debating its shortcomings, because I’d basically never encountered those edge cases in my own games.
And even now after I’ve lost my innocence on this topic, I still largely agree that the rules of go are “elegant, organic and rigorously logical”.
Some rule sets may be more complicated than others in some edge cases that rarely happen in real games (of non-beginners), but overall I still feel that all rule sets are simple compared to (say) the “baroque rules of chess”.
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Thanks for your reply. To your argument: I think it is completely true that the craftsmanship of the people in the ages long past was great. I think they could have made all these things. Nevertheless, it is of course not only a question of if they could do it, but how likely it is that games where played with simple things laying around already, versus other possibilities.
I doubt we will find the certain truth soon, but I wanted just to add that it fits the theme of a seive or woven mat of some kind as an original Goban, that Chinese apparently call the free points around a stone “breath”. I read on this page that at least one teacher says the stones can be thought of as breathing through their “liberties”.
The point (heh) being: in a mat or seive version of a goban (where the stones may be seeds, nuts, pips, dog teeth or carefully crafted stones), those points are holes through which air can flow. Hence an association with breathing of the “stone” may come naturally in such a case.
StevenageTony found probably the best answer we are ever going to get about that Lasker quote: Go Memes Pedantry - #236 by StevenageTony. Also see the discussion just before and after in that thread. I agree with him that it was probably Emanuel Lasker.
If you read further …
And no-one has yet shown WHERE anyone of the Laskers is supposed to have written this, nor has, to my knowledge, any witness said that they have heard them say this.
I think you need to read my post again. I didn’t say the source of the quote was found. I said StevenageTony gave us the best answer we are likely to get. I stand by that.
In the course of my editorial work, I have wide experience running down bogus quotes and misattributed quotes. What often happens is that a good quote gets altered into a better quote as it passes through many hands down through time. They are tightened up, or given better focus, or expanded, or made more “poetic.” In the U.S., many quotes are misattributed to Franklin and Jefferson because they are famous figures who were well known for their own actual quotes.
The secondary quote that StevenageTony found is similar to the famous quote, and it seems to me to be a very plausible source for the whole confusion. (Of course, it would be nice to know what that “other” publication was, where Emanuel’s quote supposedly occurs.)
Instead of searching for the original appearance of the Edward quote (which may not exist), someone needs to find the first appearance of the attribution of that quote to Edward. If the attribution is before the Emanuel quote, then the mystery is reinvigorated, and we can conclude that Emanuel was paraphrasing Edward. On the other hand, if no attribution to Edward exists before the Emanuel quote, then that is a point in favor of the latter as the original (or the need for more research).
I also find it more plausible that Emanuel was the originator of the idea, because he had a very philosophical bent of mind that would make him likely to think in these terms (see the biography by Hannak).
I find the whole controversy funny, because what we have here is very much like a FOAF-tale, and it shows how desperately people cling to favorite quotes and attributions.
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