Conveying the pleasures of go to people from other lands

When I first came to Europe three years ago, I visited various different areas and countries, played simultaneous games and gave lectures. I think I've now visited some 150 places in over 20 countries — so many, in fact, that I can't be sure of the exact number.   Virtually all of this teaching was for free and I paid my own travel expenses; usually the local go players would pay for my accommodation and meals. This will probably surprise all my Japanese readers, but the professionals sent on overseas tours by the Nihon Ki-in have always taught for no charge. Teaching fees in Japan are quite expensive, but overseas teaching is free; this is called 'spreading go'. Don't you think this is funny? I think that the reason there is no custom of paying fees for professional instruction overseas (excluding Asia and America) is the influence of these instruction tours.   The biggest problem point is the difference in the attitude of the side receiving the instruction. The professionals think that they are on an instruction tour; the locals think the professionals have come to enjoy some go on the side while traveling as tourists. Their assumption is that you pay a professional for instruction. If the professionals are teaching for free, then they must be doing it for fun. No one, or at least very few people, think that they are the object of an activity aimed at spreading go.   What do you think about this difference in awareness? I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about attitudes. That's why it's sad for me, midway between the two sides.   Personally, for the first two years I taught for free. I'm completely unable to do it now, but thanks to this I met many people and built up new relationships of trust, so now I'm able to begin the activity I want to carry out, and people will listen to me. Things can't be changed in a hurry, so I believe that this experience was necessary.   Enough of the prologue. Last year I began making teaching children the central part of my activity. There are various ways of spreading go. For example, there are managers of go clubs who make their living from go and also help spread go. Sometimes when I attend tournaments newspaper reporters come along to interview me — not because I am anyone special but because go itself is unusual and I'm a go professional. This PR activity is also perhaps part of spreading go.   The most basic task is to acquaint people who don't know of go with the game. In particular, I want to give children, who are full of dreams, opportunities of learning about go. To put it in an extreme way, it's enough if people just experience not go itself but Japanese culture and the Asian view of the world. Wanting to convey something to children: this is probably something that everyone naturally feels. Well, perhaps I do it because I like it rather than to spread go.   In order to teach children, local go players with the same goal visit schools with me. Schools overseas are much, much more open than Japanese schools. They allocate a regular lesson period to go, so we can meet a lot of children. Of course, not every school welcomes go; the decisive factor is the efforts of the local go players in influencing the school. At the school, I speak in English and the local go players translate. Introducing go to the children is important, but my main goal is to show the local go players my instruction methods. My hope is that a go club will then be started at the school, with the local players coming along to teach. One lecture is not enough to explain everything, and the teaching method changes at different stages. We have failures, too, but it's very meaningful when a go club is actually started at a school. (Monthly Go World, April 2000)