What does it mean “to found a school”? What is required for it?

-You cannot set a task “to found a School” as this task is not only at our human level. What’s needed to found a School? It is an interaction of a triad “Heaven – Earth – Human” as the School is founded by a human between the heaven and the earth for people. All the three levels unify in the School.
The School cannot exist without sense. Where should one search for the sense? It is impossible to found a School of Go as a table game. There won’t be any idea. Will there be true apprentices and a teacher? Vanity… If people communicate in the context of a table game, it will be a table game that will develop. So, what will happen to the people? It’s not known. Is it possible that the aim of human lives is to develop a table game? For example, Go. What is the purpose of founding a school of go table-game? There should be at least some practical goals in the basis. Somebody founds a school just because s/he plays go well. S/he founds a school to acquaint people with how he or she plays. For money or free of charge but just to acquaint. So, what’s next? Somebody gets acquainted enough, somebody doesn’t, somebody surpasses his/her teacher. What should such a student do? Should s/he leave the school or take the teacher’s place and continue developing the table game? It is rather shallow, and induces me to nothing.
So, what can we conclude? To found a School we need a deep and strong idea. But how can we find it?

Why did you decide to create the international newsletter “Goama”?

It is a web newsletter of the site gogame.info which counts over 2000 subscribers. The newsletter is popular in Europe and America. We have about 250 Russian subscribers but the journal is in English. As the director of the newsletter I’d like to say that it is not always necessary to write articles in Russian to be understood by Russian people, though, maybe, it is possible not to do it in Russian at all… Another reason is that it is important to communicate. We have found a great circle of contacts among Europeans and Americans. This was the discovery of the previous year. We didn’t expect that our postage would take the second place in the world on the quantity of subscribers. American Go E-journal heads the list. This journal existed for many years and we are only several hundreds of subscribers behind it. What does it mean? It means that people are interested in these questions, in communication. Besides, the idea of the “Goama” newsletter probably was in time. Taking this opportunity I would like to thank those patrons who helped us by investing money in the project. I would also like to thank the editor in chief – Alexandre Dinerchtein, the editors and experts of the magazine, translators and the whole creative group.

Igor Grishin, the director of the “Goama” magazine: “Yi from Go Master”

As far as I’m concerned a book by Miura Yasuyuki, “Go, an Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy” was published under your direction (Sophia Publisher). How many books have been sold and have you got any results of this project?

The book by Miura “Go, an Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy” is a peculiar book. This is a book that does not only explain the table-game Go but tells us about the role of this game in historical and economical area and culture of two civilizations – Western and Eastern ones.
While working on the edition during a year, we came to a certain decisions that channeled our conception correctly. The first question we asked ourselves then was: for whom should this book be published? For laymen or for elite readers? The answer wasn’t in favor of laymen. So, 2500 copies of the book were published. That is why it is an expensive edition and is made unusually. And it is very pleasant that nearly the whole Russian edition has already been sold. We really feel the results. We have managed to increase the number of people who treat Go not only as a table game. This book helped us strengthen such attitude towards Go in modern Russian society. For those who haven’t read this book (by the way, I advise to purchase it before the whole edition is sold) I would say that the author describes Go very existentially. Miura Yasuyuki is a person with a great life experience. He is a person who messages to his readers a deep evaluation of everything around him. We read the book chapters that despite diagrams and technical descriptions do not move you to a Go board only, do not turn you into a Go stone. With the author we sail the Pacific Ocean during the war, take part in building of luxurious Japanese hotels in the USA, in their investment. Together with Miura Yasuyuki we spend time in tea-houses. Playing Go we get in touch with the world fate. We enjoy the Master’s dignity, his internal calm. This book moves us to a very interesting level, the level of a person who is really responsible of something; at the level of a person who lives in the stream of the world history; who is able to do or not to do; to the level of a person who knows the act and absence of act. Such person can think, compare, rise above people’s fuss, above the fuss of business, above the fuss of stones and a board.
In short words, the project “Go, an Asian Paradigm for Business Strategy” has succeeded and I can see the results.

Not so long ago you edited a book on Go for laymen (“To Think and to Win: Go for the Beginners” Olymp edition, 2006) and series of education materials. Are you going to have them translated into other languages?

No, I don’t think that it is necessary, though one of them has been translated into English by Saratov branch of the Go Federation. We don’t set a task of translating of this very series as for us it is transitional. The real books that the Russian School of Strategy will be ready to offer to laymen and elite readers, Eastern and Western readers, are not written yet.

To be continued

What do you think, how many people in Russia are playing Go?

This is a very serious question, from the standpoint that we shouldn’t be interested in the quantity of Go players. It wouldn’t have sense even if there are only “one and half” persons who play Go. Even if you were the only one. It would be better as you could play Go with yourself. But in such a case there should be support to hold out. This person should be a Master otherwise he or she will fade.
Anyway many people play Go in Russia and it is crucial to realize that 99 % of them play it as a table game. In such a situation the change between you – if you support the mastery idea that has always existed in Go as in an ancient evolutional art – and these 99 % will always be hampered. People will pull you to their territory, to the territory of the table game, to the territory of competitions in the table game… Frankly speaking, Go isn’t more important than dominoes. Dominoes is a table game as well and it isn’t worse or better than Go. Draughts is a table-game too if we treat Go as a table game.
If we consider that Go isn’t just a table game then here comes a very important question: how many people in Russia treat Go not as a table game only? In this case we speak about something that is more important, about this one per cent. This one per cent of Go players who treat it not only as a table game but who see something in it, something that connects Go with a person, with life; with important questions which concern human life, human evolution. And another serious question is how many of this kind of people are there in Russia. How many people make this one per cent? Fortunately now there are several dozens of them.