hyperpape wrote:chiwito: I'd be curious about any facts you'd share on those individuals. Also, do you know of any kind of written history of Go in America, or do you get that information mostly by chance while collecting associated books and papers?
In between. I've been reading articles in places like Go World, Go Review, and the American Go Journal for nearly thirty years, along with books such as Go: More than a Game, by Peter Shotwell. While I have a very dodgy memory, I've run into a lot of material over the years and some of it stuck. Also, the history of go in America is only a century or so old; some of the older players who were aroud when I was a young one had been young players themselves when major individuals in that history were still around. The Berkeley, East Bay, and San Francisco go clubs were good places to encounter living history [probably still are]. People in those clubs were still making go history at the time, such as creating IGS.
As far as the specific folks I mentioned in my post, I met them or their heirs through book collecting. A dozen or so years ago, the American Go Journal did a nice article on my go book collection [along with a coolaceous picture of my wife's cat playing go]. Roger Newlander contacted me by email. He mentioned that back in the 1950s, when there were very few go books available in English, he had arranged to have three of them translated. He gave me the inpression that he had only done this for his own use, and that the two copies he had, the original in loose-leaf binders with pasted diagrams and one "printed" [mimeographed or something] bound copy, were all that existed. I later found out that he had presumably done a few more copies, as there was some kind of dispute and then settlement between him and the AGA over his selling them. That was briefly mentioned in one of the AGA spiral bound history books by Craig Hutchinson. If I had known any of that history at the time I met Mr. Newlander, I would have asked about it, as well as why he and J. L. Bauer, the only other person translating Japanese go books into English at the time, chose to make competing translations of the same books. Kenneth Stubb's daughter in law recently sold some of her in-law's old chess books and the like on ebay. While buying the two lots of go books [one English and one Japanese] I corresponded with her and got a little info about Mr. Stubbs and his relationship with people like Mr. Lasker. A book of Lasker's titled Chess Secrets I Learned from the Masters has little bits about go. Essentially, the book is a chatty memoir of Lasker's days on the international chess tournament scene and his relationships with other top players, especially his non-relative but good friend Emanuel Lasker. He tells a number of anecdotes related to their mutual love of go. Stubbs, as it happened, did the art for that book, a number of line drawings of various chess champions [unfortunately no go champs]. Ted Drange, a retired professor of philosophy who was known in go circles for teaching what may have been the first university academic class on go strategy as logic, sold his collection of go magazines through the AGA e-journal. I bought his Go Reviews and would have bought many other items if I hadn't been too late to submit my offer. He was kind enough to include a number of theoretical papers on the game that he had received from other academics while corresponding on go-related research.
chiwito
I'm always looking for any go publications that i don't have, in any western language. Wanna trade or sell some?
