Shusai said: "For Black 33 [= 1], playing at 36 [= 2] as usual is more reasonable."

In those days (1925) Kido usually expanded Shusai's elliptical comments to tell us what he really meant. In this case they explained about White disliking the cap but said the result could not be deemed favourable to Black, and said that the more reasonable attitude for a Black player was to play in the usual way.

Even after the extra explanation, I am sure there will be many westerners, not just RJ, who feel frustrated that no-one has explained what is actually wrong with Black's result. But therein lies the point. The westerner, typically thinking analytically, wants to know how many chunks of meaty territory or how many croutons of thickness each side has acquired so he can make a static comparison. Orientals, while never eschewing static analysis where it can be useful, tend to look down on that approach in environments with too many unknowns, and prefer instead a more dynamic synthesis. They often refer to this as a time-space continuum, and it is best exemplified for many of them in the Book of Changes (Go Seigen's favourite book), but it is also exemplified by Kido's comment here. What is more important (given that the usual play does not give an obviously bad result) is Black's correct attitude, which has the great advantage that it can last for the whole game (time+space), rather than just one move (space). Clearly this can also be seen as a recipe, if misused, for slack play, but Shusai saw it, rather than crude counting, as the starting point, and as advice a Meijin thought worth passing onto a very high dan and senior pupil.

Whether or not you choose to accept such advice yourself, it should be thought-provoking, and you won't get that sort of stimulus from tsume-go or tesuji problems. You don't really get it from replaying pro games alone, of course - the extra comment seems essential here. But at least you would never get the chance to think about Black 1 at all unless you played over this game. White won BTW, and took away much of Black's lower moyo, an action which immediately prompted Black's resignation.