JANICE KIM AUGUST 1996

The rules of go have remained virtually unchanged since their origin in China about four thousand years ago. They are remarkably simple: two players place black and white “stones” on a grid, playing anywhere they like. The single object is to surround more areas on the grid than the opponent, and the only catch is that if a stone is completely surrounded by enemy stones, it is removed from the board. Although the premises seem quite basic, the resulting number of possible variations is estimated to be larger than the number of particles in the universe.

Although Japan completely dominated go theory and practice throughout the Edo period, in the twentieth century go has again become a pan-Asian sport. In China, Korea, and Japan, go is played by nearly ten percent of the population and followed by many more. Each country has an association of master players called professionals, who from a very early age are sent to go temples (akin to Kung Fu temple/academies) to engage in what is called “research”/ Each year, after a grueling competition, one or two of the many acolytes or “researchers” are given the rank of shodan (“entering master,” or, in a more creative translation, “Enter the Dragon”). Those who “enter the dragon” step into a rarefied world of tournament play sponsored by newspapers and network television. Playing fees alone – aside from endorsements and prize money – can exceed a million dollars annually. Top players are treated a bit like Michael Jordan might be if he were also a Catholic Bishop. 

Only three people born in the West have “entered the dragon.” Two of them, Michael Redmond and James Kerwin, studied in Japan. The third, Janice Kim, graduated from the notoriously difficult Hankook Kiwon Go Academy in Seoul, Korea, the only westerner ever to do so. Although much of the go-playing world still can’t get over the idea of an American among the master ranks, Janice Kim has a huge following in Asia as well as a rapidly growing fan base in the Western Hemisphere. 

A professional go player since the age of seventeen, she has won the Fuji Women’s Championship, taken second place in the World Youth Championship, and third place in the EBS TV Lightning Cup. She also has a degree in Philosophy from NYU, and her Learn to Play Go series won England’s 1996 Brain Trust Award for best game book of 1996.

BRIAN: Do you call go a game or a sport?

JANICE: It’s considered a martial art. All the ranks are the same as in Kung Fu, like degrees of dan.

BRIAN: Belts.

JANICE: Right. It’s the Art of War, like in Sun Tzu. In Asia they think of it as the mental component of the martial arts. Whereas in the West we tend to think of martial arts as physical, like, we’ll give you the tools to use it wisely.

BRIAN: Did you study in a Shaolin-type martial arts temple?

JANICE: Well, our temple was devoted solely to go.

BRIAN: Was it really harsh?

JANICE: Well, I was a girl and semi-Western and everything, so I never had to do the really serious stuff.

BRIAN: Like what?

JANICE: I never did pushups on broken glass.

BRIAN: But some of the go kids did?

JANICE: Well, you know, the bond is closer than family. These are the people you live with, your life’s work is with them…

BRIAN: So there were bloody knuckle prints around?

JANICE: Uh-huh.

BRIAN: Did you have to shave your head?

JANICE: I didn’t have to, no.

BRIAN: But you did?

JANICE: Just once when I lost a really important game. But it’s more, like, you just want to keep your hair really short until you’ve achieved something cool and then you let it grow out.

BRIAN: So this was like an Olympics-type training camp deal, right?

JANICE: But to me it was the benchmark of total normalcy. It was like we all did the normal thing, we…

BRIAN: You were plucked from your natural families at the age of six, taken out of school, and forced to do nothing but play with pebbles for sixteen years.

JANICE: Right.

BRIAN: Do you have a special style?

JANICE: My personal style’s called Knock ‘em Down and Take ‘em Out. And then I also have a thing I do called the Flying Squirrel Move. But I guess my general technique’s basically in the tradition of the Strange Feeling Style. It has its roots in Fujisawa Shuko, from earlier in this century. Basically there are three kinds of go players. There are Influence players, who play for power; there are Territory players, who play to try to make real estate on the board; and then there are Strange Feeling players, who are just like, grooving to their own private little beat.

BRIAN: Which is that?

JANICE: Well, I kind of have a whole sort of personal cosmology of, well, I shouldn’t get into the Bee-Bop Oracle thing…

BRIAN: Who’s the Bee-Bop Oracle?

JANICE: Well, I guess I like to think of myself as the Bee-Bop Oracle.

BRIAN: Is that your nickname in go circles?

JANICE: Well, I’ve had a few besides that one.

BRIAN: Like?

JANICE: Well, when I first got to Korea they called me Doshirak. That means like bento in Japanese. Lunchbox.

BRIAN: Mmm.

JANICE: Because I didn’t like to study, I just liked to play. I was always up for a game, but when they’d ask me if I wanted to review the last game, I’d say, ‘lets have lunch.’

BRIAN: What are the others?

JANICE: Well, they kind of fail in translation.

BRIAN: What are some of the other players’ nicknames?

JANICE: Well, there’s Lee Chang-Ho. He’s only twenty but he has about fourteen titles now. Actually I gave him his most enduring nickname, Hu Changi. Little tiger. And then there’s the Bridegroom. Yu Chang-hyuk. He was the Fujitsu World Champion. Don’t ever call him that to his face if you meet him, though.

BRIAN: Is he a friend?

JANICE: Well, we…

BRIAN: Is he an old boyfriend?

JANICE: Uh, yeah. But anyway if you saw him you’d immediately see how appropriate “the Bridegroom” was, because he was always just coming back from the bathhouse and he has this sort of scrubbed and pink look. And he always wears this sort of pastel clothing, like peach jeans and stuff. Fruity pastels are very big for Korean men’s wedding outfits. And he always has this strange expectant but also, like, entitled look about him. And then there’s the Iron Goalkeeper, Nie Wei-ping. He’s the Chinese champion. Actually he’s playing in the Chinese championship against Ma Xiao-xiun in New York in the fall. I hate to say this but he’s one of the goofiest-looking people on the planet. But he’s really intelligent. He’s good friends with Deng and plays go with all the Party leaders.

BRIAN: Why do they call him Iron Goalkeeper?

JANICE: Because he kept Japan from winning the Japan-China Super Matches in the ‘80s. And also because he smoked so much he’s in an iron lung a lot of the time and he comes to tournaments with oxygen tanks and stuff. The thing is that the Chinese – who’ve really gotten into international go just recently, even though they invented it four thousand years ago – anyway they’re always trying the slightly more wacky tactics. Like they have a lot of exercise physiologists working for the Chinese Go Association. And for a while they thought by inhaling massive amounts of nitrogen during the game you could improve your game about eight percent or whatever. So they were always showing up with these big gadgets.

BRIAN: So go’s pretty hotly contested in Asia.

JANICE: Yeah, well, the Big Three – that’s Japan, China and Korea – they’re always fighting for the top slots, and the World Amateurs kind of goes around in a circle. Right now Korea holds all the world professional championships.

BRIAN: How many players are there?

JANICE: Everybody in East Asia knows what go is. But about ten percent of the people really play actively. Maybe a bit more in Korea. Which is a lot.

BRIAN: How many people play in the U.S.?

JANICE: About fifty thousand.

BRIAN: How many professional players are there?

JANICE: About seven hundred.

BRIAN: And they’re ranked like in Kung Fu?

JANICE: Right. But there’s a big gap between amateur and pro players, even though they use the same ranks.

BRIAN: What other styles are there?

JANICE: Masaki Takemiya was the biggest proponent of the Cosmic Style, or the Outer Space Style. It’s Influence playing, not Strange Feeling. It’s playing in the center, near the Pillar of Heaven. The North Star.

BRIAN: That’s the middle point on the board.

JANICE: Right.

BRIAN: And there are a lot of different titles.

JANICE: Right. Like Ryu Shi-hoon is Tengen. That’s the North Star title. So if you get that and the Kuksoo that means you’re, like, Fist of the North Star.

BRIAN: Excellent. Who’s your favorite player?

JANICE: It used to be Kato.

BRIAN: He’s the one called the Killer, right?

JANICE: Yeah, that’s actually a misnomer, though. In some early matches he killed some huge groups of stones, which is pretty unusual. But it doesn’t really fit his style now.

BRIAN: He’s mellowed.

JANICE: Yeah, well, it’s less obviously violent. But it’s kind of like sumo wrestling, where it looks like there are just these two fat guys like, pushing on each other. But they’re actually expending enormous amounts of energy just to stay in the same position. So if you see a go game, it’s kind of a myth that it’s this quiet thing. There’s a tension in the air, and afterwards it feels like a hurricane’s gone through the room.

BRIAN: And the games last a long time.

JANICE: Well, they’re trimming them down for TV. Players used to get thirty hours each. Then in the ‘80s it was about nine hours per player. Now Korea standard is about four hours a player, and then overtime.

BRIAN: Right now you’re working on helping to bring go to the West with this book series, right?

JANICE: Yes.

BRIAN: Is it hard to translate go ideas into English?

JANICE: Asian languages don’t translate well at all, and not just about go. But they do seem to describe go situations more directly. They tried out quiz shows on Korean television and they didn’t work because everybody had the same answer and hit the button at the same time. There’s just a large body of shared cultural knowledge that go’s a part of. So you can explain go things in a kind of shorthand and it conveys a lot.

BRIAN: Are you working on a new terminology for English?

JANICE: That’s probably the most interesting part of it. It’s still almost unbroken ground. But it’s a little nerve-racking because you’re setting up a system and it could be stupid. So I spend a lot of time wondering which word conveys the right shade.

BRIAN: And you’re also helping some people who are developing a computer goplayer, right? At the NYU Computer Science Department or something?

JANICE: Yeah, David Mechner and Tim Klinger at the LEON project. But I’m more just one of the go advisers.

BRIAN: Is the software going to be a decent player?

JANICE: I think it’ll be the best so far. Mainly because this is the first time that go players have approached the problem, as opposed to computer experts. But even so, if it’s very successful it’ll still only play at a beginning level. But if your average Korean seven-year-old can beat it, it’ll still be a big step forward. Go’s not like chess, you can’t brute-force it. You can’t even really search, because the board’s too big. You have to use pattern recognition. Sometimes I think that if you could ever build a computer that would play goperfectly, it would teach itself to grow living tissue and take over the world.

BRIAN: That’d be good.

JANICE: Yeah.

BRIAN: So what’s your next match?

JANICE: I’m playing in the North American Masters. I have a game on the Net on Tuesday with Cha Min Soo. He’s the guy who also won the World Stud Poker championship in Las Vegas a couple of times. He wears a big old diamond on a pinkie ring. It’s so big I keep telling him people are going to think it’s fake.

BRIAN: What’s your next game in person?

JANICE: The Fujitsus in November. I think it’s in Baltimore.

BRIAN: What are you going to wear?

JANICE: I just got this lemon neon fishnet jacket at CDG.

BRIAN: To confuse your opponent?

JANICE: I hope.

BRIAN: So if you had to do it in a few words how would you really characterize go?

JANICE: The intersection of the qualitative and the quantitative.

BRIAN: Is that an art form?

JANICE: It’s like abstract painting for two people. At the end, when the painting’s done, you look at it and see them killing themselves.