The Sino-Japanese character for `sage' or `immortal' is composed of two elements signifying `mountain person'. The word was applied to someone who was not only wise but ageless, someone in possession of supernatural powers and able to wander through heaven and earth at will.

In China and Japan mountains were regarded as realms of mystery. Uncanny things happened on mountain tops, and a person who spent years among the peaks, remote from the dust of everyday concerns, was believed to acquire a type of knowledge beyond the ken of ordinary folk. The progenitors of such awe-inspiring figures are no doubt to be found in the shamans and diviners of early China. Their activities were intimately bound up with the birth of Taoist philosophy and thus with the development of go itself.

An interesting example of the accretion of supernatural ideas around the go board is given by Liu Zong-yuan, writing in 815, describing a certain mountain near the capital of Kuei-chou in South China:

Below the shallows of the north-flowing Hsun water, and then west, is the so-called Mountain of the Transcendents' Go Game. This mountain can be ascended from the west. There is a cavern at its summit, and this cavern has screens, chambers, and eaves. Under these eaves there are figures formed from flowing stone. After ascending to the uppermost cavern go out through this to the north and you will be looking down on a great wilderness, and on flying birds -- all you will discern of them is their backs. The first person to ascend here obtained a stone game board on the summit, with red veins on a black surface, making eighteen pathways, suitable for go. This is why it is so named.

There are many legends about people who by chance encounter an immortal. An old Chinese story known as Ranka (Rotten Axe Handle), which made a deep impression on the Japanese mind, tells of a certain Wang Chih, a woodcutter:

Wang Chih was a hardy young fellow who used to venture deep into the mountains to find suitable wood for his axe. One day he went farther than usual and became lost. He wandered about for a while and eventually came upon two strange old men who were playing go, their board resting on a rock between them. Wang Chih was fascinated. He put down his axe and began to watch. One of the players gave him something like a date to chew on, so that he felt neither hunger nor thirst. As he continued to watch he fell into a trance for what seemed like an hour or two. When he awoke, however, the two old men were no longer there. He found that his axe handle had rotted to dust and he had grown a long beard. When he returned to his native village he discovered that his family had disappeared and that no one even remembered his name.

Tomb pillow. Underglaze drawing. Chin dynasty (1115-1234). China. Dated 1178.
(Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Mrs. Carroll S. Tyson.)

Most likely this object was commissioned by an ardent go player for burial among those treasures favored to accompany him after death. An example of a Chinese treatment of the familiar Ranka motif of the Immortals, as a pillow on which the deceased could rest it was presumably intended to enable the player to continue pondering his next moves in the next world. Understandably concerned as to the company he would keep on so long a journey, he sought to assure himself of the very best: the Immortals eternally gaming on the playground beneath his head.

The Japanese poet and court official Ki no Tomonori poignantly alludes to this legend in a nostalgic poem composed around the year 900, upon his return to the capital from service in a distant province:

I've come back home.
There is no friend to play go with.
That place far away
where an axe handle turned to dust -
how dear to me it has become!

And another eight centuries later the playwright Chikamatsu made use of the same legend in a memorable scene in his play The Battles of Coxinga (see Print 1-4). Go was one of the standard pictorial themes in the ink paintings of the Kano school in Japan. This school flourished from the 16th to the mid-19th century and had a repertoire of subjects adapted from Chinese models, one of them being two or three old gentlemen playing go, often shown using a flat, smooth rock for a board. Not every painting on this theme depicts immortals: some merely show it as a pastime of poets and scholars. But the scene is usually laid on a mountain top or in a lonely forest, as if the artist thereby meant to reaffirm a traditional association of go with unworldly matters.

During the Edo period in Japan (1615-1868) gods and Buddhas were frequently depicted in art with light-hearted irreverence. The most popular of them were the genial `Seven Gods of Good Fortune' (see Print 2-6), a collection of divinities, originally from different parts of Asia, who between them seem to offer mankind the promise of every sort of material prosperity. In prints and paintings they may be shown all together, in smaller groups, or singly. Sometimes two of them are playing go while a third looks on. They are usually the gods of prosperity and long life, Daikoku, Fukurokuju and Ebisu - Indian (Buddhist), Chinese (Taoist) and Japanese (Shinto) in origin, respectively. The grouping of these three in particular is analogous to the popular subject known as `The Three Wine (or Vinegar) Tasters', where Confucius, the Taoist sage known as Lao Tze, and the Buddha or a Bodhisattva are shown standing around and laughing as they taste from a huge pot. The meaning is that the essential truths of their doctrines are the same, though the flavor may be adapted to the needs of different people.

These three naturalized Japanese gods -- Daikoku, Fukurokuju and Ebisu -- surely belong to the class of immortals. And since they are always depicted as having a fine time together (see Print 1-6), go would seem to be the right game for them to play. In prints of this subject the intention may be to show that the appeal of the game is universal -- like the love of wine.

There is also a story on this theme of Bodhidharma, the patriarch of the Zen sect of Buddhism. Bodhidharma is making a tour of India when he comes across two strange and rather dirty old monks in a monastery who have done nothing for years but play go, thus earning the contempt of their fellows. As the patriarch watches them play, he sees that they keep vanishing and reappearing, which to him is a sign that they have reached enlightenment. At the end of their game they explain why they devote themselves exclusively to go.

We consider that whenever black wins, the passions wax within our bodies, and when white wins, `bodhi' [understanding] grows within our hearts, and that the white of bodhi subdues the black of passion. We use the occasion to contemplate impermanence.

The earliest version of this most interesting story appears in the Chinese collection Fa-yuan chu-lin, compiled in 668. The explanation of the monks actually makes good sense if one thinks of it in connection with the words of the 13th-century Zen master Dogen:

Suppose there is a go game. Who are the two players? If you say that you and I are playing go, it means that you have a handicap of eight stones and you understand very little. When you answer, answer this way: You play go by yourself; the opponents become one.

This quote shows why go was considered worthy of the deepest study by monks and warriors alike. The players are not opponents so much as partners playing on the same side, freed of ego, and watching the outcome of each game rather like a couple of doctors in an operating theater observing the outcome of a tricky procedure.

Earthenware figurines. China. Ca. early 17th century.

Three sages absorbed in a game.