One of the world's oldest board games, played on a wooden grid with black and white stones. Points are scored by walling off areas of the board and surrounding the opponent's pieces. The rules are simple; the game is not. Victory depends on foresight and the slow accumulation of influence. The game has long lent itself to metaphor: politics and war, like Go, reward patience more than brute force.
Go was invented in China some 2,500 years ago. Its modern form owes much to Japan. Under the shoguns of the Edo period, which ended in 1868, state-backed academies, ranking systems and official contests turned a pastime for scholar-warriors into a professional discipline. By the end of the second world war Japan stood unrivalled as the game's leading power. It sent teams on exchange visits to China and South Korea, instructing players who would later become formidable rivals. In the 1980s Chinese and South Korean players began defeating Japanese champions, reshaping the international hierarchy.
China, Japan and South Korea cannot agree even on a common rulebook. When Go was registered with the International Mind Sports Association alongside chess and bridge, in the hope of eventual Olympic recognition, the rules adopted were mostly those of the American Go Association, because the East Asian trio could not reach consensus.
Tensions reached fever pitch in 2025, when China's Ke Jie withdrew from a title match at an international tournament in Seoul after receiving repeated penalties for failing to place captured stones in a designated area. The rule had been introduced mid-tournament by the South Korean Go association—to put foreigners at a disadvantage, cynics alleged. China's Go association raged; Go fans traded insults online. China later barred foreign players, most of them South Korean, from its domestic tournaments.
Go enjoys special standing among the three countries. When Japan's prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, first met South Korea's president, Lee Jae-myung, she gave him a set of Go stones. Days later, hosting Xi Jinping in Seoul, Lee gave him a Go board carved from rare torreya wood.
Go's audience is ageing and commercial interest is ebbing. Young people are drifting towards simpler hobbies such as chess, shogi (Japanese chess) and computer games. The Nihon Ki-in, Japan's Go association, headquartered in central Tokyo, has started looking into the possible sale of its headquarters amid mounting financial strain. One of Go's ten "golden rules", attributed to Wang Jixin, a Tang-dynasty master, urges players to seek peace and avoid fighting from weakness and isolation.
There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones the magpies know themselves.