Japan's national game is called go. More complicated than chess, it is played with 180 white and 181 black stones on a board of 361 squares. The results of big matches are posted in store windows, like U.S. World Series scores.
During the war Japanese officialdom frowned on go as a time-waster. After it came off the blacklist, millions of fans stayed down in the dumps—the game was not the same without Chinese-born National Champion Wu Ching-yuan. Wu had become a convert of Aiko Nagashima, high priestess of the Jiwu cult of Buddhism, and she had said no go.
Last week, the clouds...
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