The first Chinese-Japanese coproduction and the most widely seen Asian film on that continent, THE GO-MASTERS chronicles, in epic scale, 32 years in the lives of Kuang Yi-shan (Sun Dao-lin) of China and Rinsaku Matsunami (Rentaro Mikuni) of Japan. Both men are masters of Go, an ancient and
extremely complex, chesslike game that involves military-style strategies and the conquering of territories. The film opens in 1946, revealing through flashbacks that Kuang sent his son to study Go in Japan under Rinsaku. The boy eventually became the national champion, wed his tutor's daughter,
and with the start of WWII was pressured into declaring his allegiance to Japan. After going years without hearing from his child, Kuang travels to Japan only to learn of the son's death and to declare vengeance on Rinsaku.
This film was not only coproduced by China and Japan, but also photographed in both countries, codirected by a Chinese and a Japanese, and made with technical crews from both countries. (In Japanese and Mandarin; English subtitles.) leave a comment
