Penn Go Society
Some joseki books, like Ishida Yoshio's 3-volume Dictionary of Basic Joseki and Takemiya Masaki's Enclosure Josekis, are not only excellent reference texts, but make for worthwhile reading on their own. Together, these books will teach any kyu-level player the basics of joseki, fighting, and making good shape (though the former text is a bit dated, while the latter is sadly out of print). In the preface for Fujisawa Shuko's Reducing Territorial Frameworks, translator John Power writes that Fujisawa's book "…is intended to complement the coverage of invasion techniques presented in Enclosure Josekis." While Fujisawa achieves his goal, he does so without the spark or attention to detail found in Ishida's and Takemiya's masterworks.
One problem is the nature of the subject matter itself: reducing moves simply aren't sexy. Invasions are dramatic, decisive, and can quickly turn the tables in a game; but reducing moves - as Fujisawa himself states in the introduction - are slower, steadier, and can lead to a long, drawn-out match. While reducing moves are an important element of go, one reads a book on them in the same spirit that one takes a multivitamin: because it's good for you, not necessarily because it's fun.
Reducing Territorial Frameworks is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 weighs the value of reducing moves versus outright invasions. Fujisawa lists twelve objectives of reducing moves (e.g., maintaining territorial balance, limiting a moyo), and proceeds to give examples of each objective from professional games. Reducing josekis for the side, the corner, and the Chinese fuseki are presented in Chapters 2 through 4. Chapter 5 examines reduction tactics from professional games, and Chapter 6 presents a series of whole-board problems for the reader to solve.
Power, who also translated Ishida's and Takemiya's texts, continues with his clear literary style and avoids the overuse of Japanese Go jargon. Fujisawa's book, however, suffers from a number of problems. First, even for a joseki text, it's a very dry read. Fujisawa's writing is logical to the point of being stale, and it lacks personality. The humor, keen insights, and nimble handling of trick plays that made Ishida's and Takemiya's writings so memorable are lacking here. Second, the treatment of the side and corner reduction josekis, perhaps the most valuable component of the book, is too superficial. The josekis are limited to only the more common variations, and while the variations shown are useful, if not a bit simple, many of the josekis are truncated after a half dozen moves (some are over in just three), leaving the reader to wonder how to maintain one's fighting form after the joseki has ended. Reducing moves can often lead to prolonged fights, and a short-coming of this book is that a general overview of how to handle such fights is not given a methodical treatment, but is left instead to more specific examples during the examination of professional games. Third, the art of reduction is, as Fujisawa admits, rather abstract, and despite his best efforts to establish some guidelines on where and how to reduce, much seems to depend on whole-board positioning and one's intuition. Finally, throughout the text, Fujisawa demonstrates the powerful one-two-punch of how to coordinate reducing moves with a subsequent invasion, but the examples he presents only end up giving the reader a taste of this application, leaving one longing for something a bit more satisfying and grounded in the fundamentals.
The upside is that once the lessons from Fujisawa's book are fully digested, the reader will be armed with a formidable new set of skills when facing that opponent who loves to build moyos. The reduction principles outlined here build upon those found in elementary Go books such as Ishida and Davies's Attack and Defense. The basic joseki are easy to apply, and Fujisawa's sabaki techniques also demonstrate how to prevent one's groups from becoming heavy during the attack. The difficult part is that once the first half dozen moves of the reduction are complete, readers will be left to their own ingenuity in handling their groups afterwards.
© 2009 Penn Go Society