Original title：趙治勲（囲碁棋士・名譽名人） 私の履歴書（4）內弟子スタート
Original article: The Nikkei
Author: Cho Chikun, Honorary Meijin
An uchi-deshi refers to a disciple who lives and studies with their master. Nowadays, this practice is quite rare, but it was once common in the world of Go and Shogi.
In particular, Kitani Minoru-sensei was very passionate about training his disciples. If he recognized talent, he would gather and train students regardless of whether they were from Japan or abroad. Over more than 40 years, he trained over 50 professional Go players.
When I joined the Kitani Dojo, I was the youngest uchi-deshi among about ten others. In addition to these live-in disciples, there were also an equal number of commuting students. Together with Kitani-sensei's seven children, I was suddenly thrown into a household of nearly thirty people.
I must preface this by saying that I have almost no memories of the four years following my entry into the dojo. This may be simply due to my young age at the time, or perhaps because I experienced so much hardship that my subconscious erased those memories. Much of what I recall comes from stories others later told me.
When I reached school age, I was enrolled in the Tokyo Korean School, which was some distance from the dojo. However, it wasn't long before I hardly attended school at all. Perhaps I found the classes boring, or maybe I couldn’t adapt to group life. I often made excuses, saying, "I'm too busy with Go studies at the dojo from Monday to Friday," so I only went to school on Saturdays. Sometimes, I would even play Go with the principal, who was also an enthusiast.
During that time, I pretended to go to school every day, but in reality, I went to my brother Cho Chang-yeon's apartment, located between the dojo and the school. Since my brother was rarely home during the day, I could spend time quietly by myself. I would draw, write, and read in the apartment.
Of course, the books I read were in Japanese, and my favorites were the works of Yoshikawa Eiji. I was deeply engrossed in historical novels like The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Musashi, and my Japanese improved relatively quickly as a result. To me, Yoshikawa Eiji’s works were like my textbooks.
The reason I lived this kind of "reclusive" life was that the level of the other disciples at the dojo was so high that I lost interest in Go.
At the dojo, we were left to our own devices, and no one would teach you directly. Kitani-sensei would only observe from the background. To improve, you had to compete with the other disciples.
At first, the seniors would say, "Let's have a practice game," and take the initiative to play with me. But I quickly realized that the level here was entirely different from the Go clubs in Korea, and they didn’t play as gently as Rin Kaiho had during the public fast game.
Especially at that time, the dojo was known as the "House of Demons," full of extremely strong seniors. Among them were future legends like Ishida Yoshio, who would later become the 24th Honinbo, Masao Kato, the Honorary Tengen, and others like Masaharu Sato and Kunio Kurosawa. Although they were not yet professional players, they already possessed skills beyond that of ordinary professionals.
Go is a game of competing for territory, but when playing against these seniors, they would ruthlessly invade the territory I had just secured, easily destroying it. On the other hand, whenever I tried to invade their territory, I would get completely wiped out. Every game I played deeply impressed upon me just how weak I was.
The rule was that if you won, the number of handicap stones would decrease; if you lost, the number of stones would increase. At one point, in a practice game with Ishida Yoshio, I was receiving a 9-stone handicap. A 9-stone game, known as jomoku, is typically used for teaching beginners. The "Korean prodigy" had no shine here.
If I had come two or three years later, perhaps I could have faced these strong seniors with more courage. But in my young and naive state, I was mentally crushed, and my spirit collapsed. In this dojo, which valued autonomy, there were no adults who would scold me, saying, "You need to study harder."
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