Author's Note: I received this inspiration from a variety of different Chinese and Japanese legends and myths, and have attempted to use the tone and even exact words that a traditional storyteller would use. If it seems florid, remember that a single character may encompass a much more complex theme.
A Game of Chess
A long time ago, in a village in the hills of the north, there was a scholar who was renowned for his skills at chess. His village saw new challengers everyday, hoping to defeat him, but his tactics were astounding and full of foresight, and he was never defeated. This man's surname was Ni and his birthname Peng, but everyone else referred to him by his courtesy name, Xuanche, or Brilliant Chariot.
Every morning, Brilliant Chariot would travel through the pine forests fringing the village to drink from the spring there. It was there that he would ponder new strategies, washing them down into his memory with draughts of pure water.
It happened on a fine summer morning that Ni Peng went to his spring to find a very beautiful maiden standing by the spring:
Adorned with the hues of ten thousand purples and a thousand reds,
With a face white and shapely as a waning moon,
Her crow-black hair flowed long and thick,
Her lips glossy red as a cherry,
More beautiful than the moon maiden was she,
A figure as the stem that holds the lotus flower.
"What brings you here, Guniang?"
"You are Ni Peng the Brilliant Chariot, are you not?" Her voice was as the song of the nightingale.
"A challenger I believe you are, but no ordinary one do I consider you," said the scholar.
The fair maiden smiled, giggling slightly. "You are very intelligent. I'm a Shenxian, a nature goddess. Your fame has reached even the immortals, and I have been sent to challenge you."
A god challenging a mortal! This was no ordinary feat, especially since the age when gods and men mingled freely was long past. But Ni Peng did not bat an eye.
"Certainly. I challenge everyone, but if you're really a Shenxian, then let us play with some valuables."
"Very well then," replied the maiden, "I will wager my very home, an island in the sea known as the Pedestal of the Sun, where the last Sun-Bird returns to roost for the night. And what will you wager?"
"I will wager my chess set of fine waxwood and silver, and I will swear never to play chess again, should I lose."
A mighty wager indeed!
"The first is nothing but chaff to me, but the other, something worth more than your own life. Be careful of what you wager; it may become a curse upon your own head."
Ni Peng replied, "I swear upon the name of my ancestors that, should I lose, I will follow through with my share of the wager, or be damned as an unfilial son."
"You are set on your ways. Then come with me."
She grasped his hand with her bamboo-slender fingers, leaping into the air to soar ten thousand miles into the clouds. When they finally landed, they landed on a massive plain, where the ground was nothing but clouds.
The goddess clapped her hands twice, and from the ground emerged a massive chessboard, with a real river flowing in the middle, and real chariots and war elephants and soldiers. Ni Peng was astounded at the sight, which no mortal man had ever seen before.
"As you are the guest, you may choose your army first."
Ni Peng chose the army clad in red, which always goes first, and the game commenced.
At first the game went towards Ni Peng's favor. His chariots and mounted soldiers thundered forward, his foot-soldiers took the most advantageous positions, and his cannons readied to fire. However, as he commanded his horseman to charge at a footsoldier, to his astonishment the footsoldier did not yield and become captured, but fought back with his halberd, slicing into the horse's haunch and felling it.
Ni Peng the Brilliant Chariot was agape, his countenance white with mixed confusion and rage.
"How could it do that? That is cheating!"
The maiden smiled, replying, "No, it is merely magic."
The game drew on:
Her war elephants were not squeamish to ford the swift river,
Her general and bodyguard not cooped up in their camp,
Her cannons aimed straight like fiery arrows,
Her footsoldiers retreated to strike again,
Her cavalry charged through blocking men,
Striking them down like sickles through fresh grain:
Surely this was some powerful magic
For the Brilliant Chariot was at last broken.
If at first his countenance was troubled, Ni Peng the Brilliant Chariot was perfectly calm.
"It appears that I have won with my magical strategy," the maiden said. "Now I pray you will fulfill your wager."
"To the contrary, my beautiful goddess, I do believe you have not won."
She was taken aback, but replied: "There's no need to be in denial. Either you submit to your loss, or you are an unfilial son unworthy of your family name."
"Although you may have worked your immortal magic, bestowed on you by the Jade Emperor himself, you have not counted on a stronger force of magic to negate your victory. The magic I wielded on this battlefield was more powerful than you could imagine, the Magic of the Game:
For is not the magic of stability--
The magic that guides the Sun-Bird to the West,
The magic that swells the ocean's breast,
The magic that brings sustaining rain by spring
And icy snow by winter's gust--
Ordained by a power transcending the universe
The power that birthed Pan Gu
And the egg that broke to become earth and sky?
So thus is the power of the Magic of the Game
Which ordains each piece to take its place."
The scholar's words went to her heart, and she wept that she had defied the order Immortals before her had created. But the scholar went to her, picked her up from the ground, saying, "It is forgiven, for the power of magic is to endure and not to avenge."
And so it was that Ni Peng the Brilliant Chariot came to win not only the Pedestal of the Sun but also the love of the beautiful goddess, who sacrificed her own immortality to live her life with Ni Peng. Their descendants were believers of the Magic of the Game; they were warriors, tacticians, even men and women who came to devote their lives to practicing the Magic of Games, as Ni Peng did when he was alive. And in his honor, their island, the Pedestal of the Sun, came to bear his name: Nippon.
