Hikaru no go

AUTHOR:Hotta, Yumi

ARTIST: Takeshi Obata (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: Shueisha (Japanese); VIZ Media (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1998-2003

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1999-2003 (English translation, 2004-2011)

Publication History

Author Yumi Hotta got the idea for Hikaru no go after playing a game of Go with her father-in-law in the 1990’s. Her idea won the Story King Award of Shueisha’s manga magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. The magazine teamed her with the up-and-coming manga artist Takeshi Obata. Hotta wrote the story for Hikaru no go, and Obata did the major artwork. As is common for manga art production, Obata was assisted by a creative staff, and the twenty-two support artists are credited in the final volume of the manga. They include Hotta’s husband, Kiyonari Hotta, with whom she had worked on a four-panel manga about horse racing. Yukari Umezawa, a young Go master, supervised the drawings of the moves and board positions of the many Go matches featured in the manga. She was also assisted by a staff of twelve Go players and the Japanese Go Association.

The series ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from December, 1998, to July, 2003. It comprised 189 chapters, called games. Because of the series’ success, from April, 1999, to September, 2003, all episodes were published in a total of twenty-three tankobon volumes. The books added a total of eleven extra stories. They also featured special pages in which Hotta addressed the readers directly to make casual comments on different aspects related to the series.

In the United States, VIZ Media published all twenty-three books from June, 2004, to May, 2011. Some fans were angered by VIZ Media’s decision to censor all references to smoking by characters. Visually, cigarettes were erased and replaced with drawings of chewing gum; also, dialogue was altered. This was done to adjust the manga for a young-adult audience in the United States. However, the occasional visual or verbal reference to smoking slipped by the censors, such as “smoking permitted” signs in areas where characters gathered.

Plot

In Hikaru no go, Hotta brings a mischievous twelve-year-old boy in touch with the game through an encounter with the ghost of a young Go teacher from Japan’s medieval ages. Hotta’s idea was intended for the young male readership of Weekly Shonen Jump.

When his parents cut his allowance as a result of poor grades, sixth-grader Hikaru Shindo ransacks his grandfather’s attic for some antiques to sell. He and his friend, Akari Fujisaki, stumble upon an old Go board. Only Hikaru can see that blood has been spilled on the board. The ghost of Fujiwara-no-Sai appears and speaks to Hikaru. The first encounter shocks Hikaru into unconsciousness. Soon Sai contacts Hikaru again and tells Hikaru that he was a young Go teacher in Japan’s medieval Heian period. Accordingly, Sai dresses and behaves like a Heian nobleman. Because Sai was cheated and died too young to play a perfect game, he seeks a human medium through which he can fulfill his wish to play again. According to the manga, Sai was behind the triumphs of the legendary nineteenth century Go master Honinbo Shusaku.

At first, Hikaru is reluctant to play Go. When he does, all his moves are directed by Sai. Only the promise of winning money at the game motivates Hikaru. Sai finds Hikaru’s motivations abominable but goes along nevertheless. Hikaru soon becomes the rival, and later the friend, of one of the strongest young Go players, fellow teenager Akira Toya. Akira is trained by his father, Go master Toya Meijin.

Hikaru and Akira go to different middle schools and join their schools’ Go clubs. Their rivalry continues as they are supported by a different cast of teammates. In addition, they have to fight a variety of bullies and classmates who are jealous of their Go skills.

Even though his wins are directed by Sai, Hikaru grows to like Go. When he plays without Sai’s directions, however, he loses. This earns him a reputation as an unpredictable, maverick player. Eventually, Hikaru uses the Internet to let Sai play Go under his own name in cyberspace. Toya Meijin joins the Internet Go games seeking to defeat Sai. Some Go players assume Sai is Hikaru’s screen name as their game styles are similar.

After Akira becomes a professional Go player—which in Japan is a decision to be made before turning eighteen—Hikaru sets the same goal for himself. To prove his merits he has to join a pro-Go school, which is known as an insei school. Without Sai’s help, Hikaru loses his games. Hikaru begins to win on his own, however, by relying on his increasingly good instincts for the game.

Once Hikaru turns professional, he often teams with Sai, who has become a steady Go presence on the Internet. Their opponents include Akira, who plays Hikaru, and Toya Meijin, who takes on Sai. In Sai and Toya’s climactic game, Toya loses by overlooking a brilliant move of the kind Sai sought to make to fulfill his career. Soon afterward Hikaru refuses to let Sai play more Internet games. Because of this, Sai disappears, never to return in the series’ present.

Left on his own, Hikaru gives up Go. Later, he struggles to come back. He has to rely on his own skills, and he slowly establishes his reputation. At this point, the series turns to an interlude. It offers six episodes called side stories, featuring the series’ top players, excluding Hikaru, and ending with Sai. After this interlude, the plot moves toward preparations for the climactic Hokuto Cup—a tournament for the best under-eighteen Go players from China, South Korea, and Japan.

As part of the three-member team representing Japan, Hikaru and Akira are finally joined on the same side. The games against China come first. Only Akira can win his game. On the final day of the tournament, Hikaru faces South Korea’s best player, Kong Yong Ha. Surprisingly, Hikaru loses. Nonetheless, Hikaru discovers that ultimately he and Kong play for the same reason: to link the past with the future. With this insight, Hikaru no go ends, leaving Hikaru to look for more games in the future.

Volumes

• Hikaru no go: Descent of the Go Master, Volume 1 (2004). Collects issues 1-7. Introduces key characters and the main premises of the series: Teenage boy Hikaru Shindo connects with the spirit of an ancient Go teacher, Fujiwara-no-Sai. Sai persuades Hikaru to pick up Go, at first directing his every move.

• Hikaru no go, Volumes 2-22 ( 2004-2011). Each volume collects about eight to nine of the original episodes, or games. Sai disappears in volume 15 after having guided Hikaru to become a professional Go player. Volume 18 stands out, offering six episodes called side stories that highlight major characters. With volume 20, preparations and preliminary games begin, leading up to the climactic three-nation Hokuto Cup that ends the series.

• Hikaru no go: Endgame, Volume 23(2011). On the final day of the Hokuto Cup, Hikaru plays against the Korean champion, Ko Yong Ha. Hikaru loses, but both players are united in their love for Go, a game that links the past with the future.

Characters

• Hikaru Shindo, the protagonist, is a gangly Japanese adolescent with a trademark two-tone hairstyle, blond in front and naturally black in back. During the series, he grows from an eleven-year-old to a nearly eighteen-year-old boy. His clothing style changes from casual to formal for the Hokuto Cup tournament. He is basically good-natured and mischievous. His relationship with Sai and his Go matches drive the story of the series.

• Fujiwara-no-Sai, mentor of Hikaru, is the ghost of a medieval Go instructor of Japan’s Heian period. He is dressed in the style of his time with a prominent black cap and multilayered kimono. His features are drawn to look feminine; many readers mistook him for a woman at first. He appears to Hikaru and begs him to play Go, the great unfulfilled passion of his life. After playing on the Internet for a time, Sai disappears in volume 18.

• Akira Toya, Hikaru’s key opponent and, later, his teammate, is a black-haired teenager of Hikaru’s age, dressed conservatively throughout his adolescence. He is a serious, accomplished Go player who is trained by his father. His rivalry with Hikaru drives much of the action of the story.

• Toya Meijin is Akira’s father and the key contemporary adult of the series. He is an elegant, lean, middle-aged man with expressive hands. He has medium-length hair that is dyed blond, strands of which fall into his forehead. He is mentor to Akira. He is fascinated by Hikaru’s play, which is really that of Sai, whom he battles on the Internet.

• Ko Yong Ha, leader of the South Korean team at the Hokuto Cup, is an elegant Korean adolescent just under eighteen years old. He dresses in a suit and tie for the tournament. He is passionate about Go and certain of his invincibility. His final match against Hikaru provides the climax of the series.

• Akari Fujisaki is one of the few developed female characters of the series. She is the same age as Hikaru and Akira and dresses conservatively. She seems to have romantic feelings for Hikaru that never blossom. Out of her affection for him, she becomes a Go player and leader of her middle school’s girls’ Go team.

• Tesuo Kaga, the Japanese antagonist of Hikaru and Akari, is a lean teenager who goes to the same middle school as Akari. He is captain of the rival shogi (Japanese chess) team. He hates to play Go because his father forbade him from playing shogi and forced him into Go (he loses all his matches to Akira). He smokes as a sign of his rebellious nature in the Japanese original and chews gum instead in the edited American version.

Artistic Style

Unusual for a manga, Hikaru no go features an artist, Obata, who drew but did not write the story. Instead Obata collaborated with Hotta, who wrote the story. Throughout the series, Obata followed the basic stylistic elements of manga. Namely, characters have large, expressive eyes and faces that can contort to comic proportions to represent their emotions, whether good or bad.

Of particular visual interest is that throughout the series, the teenage characters grow up by some six to seven years. Obata’s drawings reflect these changes. While Hikaru keeps his two-tone haircut, his features become more adult. He is also drawn to act more stylishly, particularly when placing a Go stone on the board. The clothing of the characters is important to Obata. Hikaru’s fashion style changes as he grows up. The original manga showed names of certain brands, which the American version edited out.

Fujiwara-no-Sai is drawn to look almost like a woman, befitting the style of a medieval Japanese nobleman. This led even Japanese readers to mistake him for a woman. His clothes and visual gestures, however, are in line with the historical tradition of his era.

A particular challenge was drawing the Go board for the various matches. In these cases, Go master Umezawa supervised Obata’s drawings. She, Obata, and Hotta felt it was crucial to show correct, believable positions of the black-and-white Go stones on the board. Occasionally, a mistake in the drawing of a Go position was discovered only at the last moment of copy editing the weekly manga pages.

Obata likes to include occasional, detailed scenes featuring aspects of contemporary Japanese settings. When the action of the Go matches heats up, there is often a close-up focus on hands placing stones on the board with great panache. Obata’s style is generally vivid, and his panels show variation in tune with the tempo of the storytelling. As is common for manga, all interior pages are in black and white. Only the covers of the books are in color.

Themes

Hikaru no go is a coming-of-age story. This theme is fueled by the ghostly presence of the mischievous Fujiwara-no-Sai, who acts like an older brother or mentor to Hikaru. From a somewhat lackadaisical sixth grader, Hikaru grows into an ambitious Go player, who uses self-discipline and study to achieve his goal of becoming a great player. This theme is developed through a plot that features many of Hikaru’s matches, first as a puppet of Sai, and then as forceful player of his own. Akari serves as a foil for Hikaru because he achieves his strength as a player by normal rather than supernatural means. Akari is trained by his father instead of a spirit.

Hikaru’s identification with Go is sometimes expressed through his wearing clothes with the number five on them (as on the cover of volume 1). This is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of five, “go.” Hikaru becomes fascinated with the elegance of dropping Go stones on the board. Many panels focus on this movement. His growth is also expressed by his more mature facial features and his more conservative clothes as he moves from elementary to middle to high school.

Apart from featuring Go as a way for adolescents to find a higher, more spiritual goal in their lives, Hikaru no go is also concerned with issues facing Japanese teenagers, particularly bullying. The series features quite a few bullies and cheaters. Hikaru and his friends overcome them all. In these instances, the visuals often show detailed scenes of contemporary Japanese settings, such as school buildings, Go salons, or the homes of the teenagers.

The splendor of the past is visualized in the many lavish drawings of Sai in Heian-era court attire. As Sai is drawn in what modern readers view as a feminine look, the series also touches on questions of gender and the changing display of masculinity through the ages.

Impact

In Japan, Hikaru no go fueled a tremendous interest in the game of Go among adolescents fascinated by the series. Go lost its somewhat stuffy image as a game for older people. As a result, Go has become fashionable among young Japanese of both sexes. When the series was translated, it also created interest in Go in the United States.

Among manga, Hikaru no go extended the range of the popular subgenre of sports manga to include nonphysical games that relied on mental strength and skills alone. The animated television series proved popular and reinforced the attraction of Go among young viewers. This was aided by the inclusion of Umezawa’s one-minute Go lessons at the end of each episode.

The success of Hikaru no go also justified the uncommon collaboration of a writer and a graphic artist in creating a manga series. Typically, in manga, one artist would be responsible for both aspects of the graphic novel—a marked difference from the American and European model. Ohba collaborated with a manga writer, Tsugumi Ohba, for his next two series, Death Note (2003-2006) and Bakuman (2008- ).

Television Series:

Hikaru no go. Directed by Shin Nishizawa. Studio Pierrot, 2001-2003. This animated TV series stars the voice of Tomoko Kawakami as Hikaru Shindo. In terms of plot, the seventy-five episodes of the animated television series generally adhere to the manga, but they only cover the events up to volume 19. A final New Year’s special, which aired in Japan on January 3, 2004, shows the events leading to the Hokuto Cup that ends the manga. All episodes have been dubbed in English.

Further Reading

Clamp. Cardcaptor Sakura (1996-2000).

Ohba, Tsugumi, and Takeshi Obata. Bakuman (2008- ).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Death Note (2003-2006).

Bibliography

Cha, Kai-Ming. “Sports Manga Gets in the Game.” Publishers Weekly 252 (April 18, 2005): 25-26.

Exner, Nina. “Basic Reader’s Advisory for Manga: Select Popular Titles and Similar Works.” Young Adult Library Services 5 (Spring, 2007): 13-21.

Johnson-Woods, Toni, ed. Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Continuum, 2010.

Raiteri, Steve. “Graphic Novels.” Library Journal 130 (May 15, 2005): 98-103.

Shimatsuka, Yoko. “Do Not Pass Go.” Asiaweek 27 (June 29, 2001): 54-55.