There is another book in which Stuart Dowsey is credited: the Penguin edition of "The Master of Go" by Kawabata Yasunari, published 1976.
John Fairbairn quoted in
https://senseis.xmp.net/?KawabatasMasterOfGo the credit lines on page 8 (unnumbered, after Seidensticker's Introduction):
"New diagrams, showing the progress of the match, were prepared for this Penguin edition by Stuart Dowsey, Director of the London Go Centre."
John Fairbairn continues:
"Now I remember talking to Stuart about this translation. It was 30 years ago, and I have to rely on memory, but my strong recollection is that Stuart tried very hard to get Seidensticker to change parts of the translation but was totally unsuccessful (
and had there been any changes they would surely also have been reported or acknowledged). There may have been changes in later editions but it beggars belief that 'and' would be changed to 'or' on the say-so of a go player. There are certainly, from a
go player's point of view, many infelicities in the translation (which is despite that a masterful work), but I'm not sure I recall anything that might go down as a pure mistranslation of this order."
and in a later entry:
"At this stage I'd have to assume changes were made for the Penguin edition, on the grounds that they listened to Dowsey regarding diagrams and they were in close touch with him regarding the Iwamoto Go for Beginners, but they omitted to acknowledge the
changes to him and/or the general public. Maybe this was the only change. I do know that there was at elast one change that Dowsey wanted that was not made (regarding oyogu)."
The above mentioned maybe only change refers to p. 124f. (Penguin edition), where "hanetsugi" (はね粘ぎ) of the original was translated as "diaogonal and connection" (by Dowsey's intervention) as opposed to Seidensticker's "diagonal linking", as well
as "possible kō threats" (kō in italics) as opposed to Seidensticker's "possible plays from kō". Stuart made it readable here.
The mention of "oyogu" refers to p. 42 (Penguin), where Ōtake's "kō tobu ka,oyoguka,dotchi ni shiyō ka, sanjikanhan kangaechatte ..." (こう飛ぶか、泳ぐか、どっちにしようか、三時間半考えちゃって......) Dowsey made into "
Three and a half hours deciding whether to jump or to push." from Seidensticker's "Three and a half hours deciding whether to jump or to swim."
So, contrary to John's recollection, this change was made, too. And even more: Both versions' sentences are folowed by footnote 12 which contains another mistake by Seidensticker. He writes that the "jump" would be to R-13 ("ro-jūsan" [ろ十三] in the
original) and the "swim" to R-12 (ro-jūni" [ろ十二]), while Dowsey corrected that into S-7 for he "jump" and S-8 for the "push". Seidensticker confused the "ro-13" board coordinate for a moment with "R-13" and there was no editor at Knopf who knew Go
or new how to read Japanese Go diagrams.
It is a shame, that newer editions of "The Master of Go" discarded Stuart Dowsey improvements and went back to Seidensticker's original version, even with those ugly and wrongly diagrams, if you consider the disgusting diagrams from chapter 22 on, with
four dead stones rotting off. Now that both Penguin and Knopf are part of Random House, a switch to the Penguin version should be possible.
"The Master of Go" was published in the US by Alfred A. Knopf Inc. in 1972. As always with Knopf's English translations of Japanese Literature, Charles E. Tuttle got a licence for Japan and Martin Secker & Warburg a licence for the UK, which brought it
to that market in 1973. Did Stuart read the UK version and approached them with his proposal for better diagrams and a Go-like language? Was he then in Japan and saw the Tuttle version? Or dealt he directly with Penguin as John Fairbairn suggested?
What I would love is to have a chat with Stuart Dowsey - I only met him once in 1978, buying "The Master of Go" from him at the London Go Centre - and hear his first hand account of what he tried to do then.
Maybe Alice, who claimed here two weeks ago her daughtership, might ask him, or any other friend of Stuart, and give me a hint whether he is likely to speak about the truth. I'd definitely happy to come over to Luton - preferebly but not necessarily
before the Brexit.
Thomas Hagemann
Bonn / Germany
[Even robots can guess my dot separated electronic mail address]
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