The Rhetoric of Game Practices: Go and Discursive Control in Tokugawa Japan

Abstract

This essay draws from materialist rhetoric and game studies to conceptualize games as objects and sets of material practices whose relations to other objects and practices articulate discursive knowledge and, therefore, serve as sites of meaning making. Employing a Foucauldian archeology, it draws on documents, practices, and records surrounding the board game go during Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868) to demonstrate how practices related to the game operated as part of a “governing apparatus” aimed at the regulation of players’ bodies. This analysis locates the rhetorical value of games in the relational contexts that structure discursive knowledge, framing game practice as material exercises of these knowledges, or rhetorical knowledges. As one consequence, this approach opens a space to conceive of game-adjacent texts, paratexts, and practices as essential components in the discussion of the discursive practice and rhetorical understanding of games.