This was inspired partly by the usefulness of a counterblast to the e-book hype - a reminder of a gentler age when things still got done and at a more pleasant and leisurely pace - but also by the thought that some people might like to know a little more about go columns in Japanese magazines.
They come in all shapes and sizes, of course, but what seems to be the prevailing idea in the west - a tsumego problem - is not all that common. One I just happened to look at today is almost as far away from that as you can get. It is Aoba Kaori's column in the mainstream weekly magazine Shukan Shincho. She is a 2-dan. Together with Nakahara Makoto's shogi column, it occupies a complete advert-free page near the middle of the 150-page magazine. In fact, this middling sort of position seems to be normal for go columns, whereas chess tends to get shoved into the back of our magazines and newspapers.
I give the complete column (7 April 2011 issue), by way also of a recommendation of such an enlightened magazine 
There is a way of playing go called "postal go", in which players write their moves one by one in letters and send them to each other. Nowadays, we are in an age when a light-hearted game can also be played quickly on the internet, but there are still people who enjoy more leisurely play like postal go.
In fact, I too once played postal go about 15 years ago. But while I put an awful lot of effort in to each move, as soon as the reply came, I had to force myself to write a letter as well, and we stopped after 10 moves. The rest of the game was played by telephone, and so it became "telephone go".
Generally it takes about 250 moves before go reaches the stage where territories have been completed, and so if you proceed at the rate of sending two moves a week, that is each sending one move to the other, it will take two and a half years for a game to be completed. I suppose this can even be called a performance rather than a game.
There are, nevertheless, people who play postal games several times right to the end, while they are currently in the middle of other games. Mr K, who lives near Tokyo, is, in addition to running a business, a go fan who records all his games, 100 plus a year, in a notebook. For many years, he has continued postal games with a Mr T who lives near Kobe, and for him this is just so much fun. He writes the number of each move on a record sheet, and after it has been sent back and forwards dozens of times, the paper wears out. There are, apparently, also cases where mistakes in numbering occur.
This is a wonderful story, but there is an unexpected side.
Postal go costs money for stamps, at 80 yen each. So, 250 moves x 80 yen = 20,000 yen. Oof! That's about the level of the game fee for a game in the preliminaries of a quickplay event for pros. That means each move by a pro is worth 80 yen!
The diagram shows what is said to be the first postal game in Japan. It was a 4-stone handicap game and White was Murase Shuho, later Honinbo Shuho. Black was Sannohe Yoshiaki of the old Nanbu fief. Nowadays, once White has slid into A, Black would normally play at B, but Black had a grander vision.
Actually, although this is the oldest surviving postal game (started in 1884; it was left unfinished after 117 moves, but only after a quite remarkable opening), the correspondence suggests a game was begun earlier, in 1883. Sannohe lived in the far north of Japan in Mutsu, and apart from his games with Shuho, he also played postal games with Kobayashi Tetsujiro. He later took part in Hoensha games as a 2-dan, and eventually reached 3-dan. Shuho also played postal games with Furuya Okisaburo. These too were left unfinished, the reason of course being Shuho's illness and untimely death.
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John Fairbairn
