American Go E-Journal » 2018 » January

Fred Baldwin found this on a Twitter feed. Yoshida Kenkō  was a Japanese author and Buddhist monk. His most famous work is Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness), one of the most studied works of medieval Japanese literature. Kenko wrote during the Muromachi and Kamakura periods.

“The Memory Palace of Mateo Ricci” includes a reference to a European coming across go in China, reports Jose Santiago.  On page 157 of Jonathan D Spencer’s book (Penguin Books, 1984 ed.), is a section describing a memory method used by the Jesuits and previously by Greek and Roman scholars referred to as Memory Palaces:

“Hortensius recalled every price of every item sold at auction, while Chen Jian recalled each detail of his accounting books and the produce of his looms. Scaevola, riding back to his home in the country, could replay in his head every move of the pieces in the board game he had lost, while Wang Can could do the same with the game of Chinese checkers (weiqi) where he had been only a spectator.”

“I recall my friend Victor Chow 5p being able to recall five games he played simultaneously in Oxford,” Santiago adds. “I can do about 50 moves with difficulty!”

“You might easily miss it,” writes Dewey Cornell, “but in my recent interview with PBS NewsHour  you can see my go board and bowl in the background.”