A Brief History of... Gomoku

For the next A Brief History Of article, we're actually taking our first real adventure over to Japan. Bet you didn't think the first Japanese game I'd be covering was a board game, eh? It's funny how things play out when tackling gaming chronologically.

Of course, Japan is going to be a massive player - nay, the defining player in the video game industry come the late 1970s-onward, thanks largely in part to Taito, Namco, and Nintendo. But, as of writing this, we're in 1973. Taito and Sega are busy copying Pong, Namco is merely a distributor of Atari games in Japan, and Nintendo is barely on the map. Really, all the action is taking place in the United States.

But, as we can see from this article, and my most recent Gomoko article, that didn't stop Japan from being an influence prior to their earliest arcade hits. Developers just had to look to different source material, and they found it in the form of board games. As we saw in the Gomoko article, the earliest of the Far-Eastern board games to get the computer game treatment that we know of was Go. That was in 1968, written by Albert Lindsey Zobrist. Zobrist is an important figure in computer science, as he invented a hashing system, suitably named after him (Zobrist hashing), that is used in computerised board games like Go and Chess. We're not going to go too in depth on information relating to Go in this article, however - I'll save that for a separate Go article.

That being said, it's extremely difficult to separate the history of Go from the history of Gomoku, as the games are inextricably linked. For Gomoku is simply a variant of Go that gained a whole life unto itself after arriving in Japan. Go was created in ancient China, with sources dating it being between 2,500 and 4,000 years old! It's still being played today, which makes it one of the oldest - if not the oldest - extant board game still actively played today.

Go-Go-Gomoku

It's entirely unclear how and when Gomoku developed out of Go as a separate variant. Nobody really seems to know, from what I can tell. The best sources I could find merely suggest that the two developed alongside each other, with Gomoku - or Wuziqi, as it's known in Chinese - being a simpler game using the same board and pieces that was designed to be more easily played by children. Other sources imply that it might've actually been invented in Japan... What is clear to me is that the history of Gomoku is a complete mess.

Fortunately, the core difference in rules between Go and Gomoku is abundantly clear. Go is about territory control and capturing enemy pieces, whereas Gomoku is an alignment game - basically a larger scale version of Tic-Tac-Toe or Connect Four (and, consequently, far more interesting.) Instead of three or four in a row, Gomoku goes for five in a row. *Connect Five, if you will. The name "Gomoku" itself refers to the game's five-in-a-row alignment rule. The full name of the game is Gomoku-Narabe (五目並べ) - Go（五）meaning "five," Moku (目) meaning "item", and Narabe (並べ) meaning "line up;" literally translated "five items line up."

Back to the mess that is Gomoku's history, we now turn to how the game arrived in Japan. This isn't much clearer than the development of Gomoku out of Go. In fact, there are two dates floating around for the arrival of Go and Gomoku in Japan. Great. Reminds me of the dating for the Biblical Exodus, as we have an "early" date and a "late" date to consider. For reference, when I say Gomoku, I'm referring to both Go and Gomoku. The two don't really become separate entities in Japan until much later on. Plus, it saves me the hassle of constantly writing "Go and Gomoku" all the time.

We'll start with the early date. These sources state that Gomoku arrived in Japan via Chinese emigrants in ~270 BC. That's a damn long time ago, especially compared to the late date. In this chronology, Gomoku arrived under a different name, Kakugo (覚悟), a word that translates to "readiness." However, there's no actual evidence I could find to support this early date. One source cites a book from ~100 AD that references the game, but there's no evidence I could find of a text like that actually existing.

The far more likely-to-be-true date for the arrival of Gomoku in Japan is the late date of 754 AD. The story goes that it was brought back to Japan from China by a Japanese ambassador named Kibi no Makibi, otherwise known as Kibi Daijin (Minister Kibi). Born into a noble family, he was sent as part of an envoy to Japan in 717, staying there for 18 years, absorbing all the he could from the China of the Tang Dynasty. After returning, he was heavily involved in the governance of Japan under several emperors, before being sent back to China in 752. It was from this second trip, concluding in 754, that Kibi brought Gomoku over to Japan. It's actually from Japan where we get the name Go from, despite the game's Chinese origin. It's derived from the word igo (囲碁). The second of those Kanji is quite literally the Kanji for Go. It became such a popular game in Japan that it got its own Kanji all for itself. The Chinese name for Go is Weiqi (literally "surrounding game"), and Gomoku's Chinese name is Wuziqi ("five piece game").

Artist's rendition of Kibi no Makibi.

Before I continue on with Japan's history with Gomoku, I do want to briefly mention that it also spread to Korea, likely a century or two, at least, before it got to Japan. Go in Korea is known as Baduk, with the Gomoku variant being known as Omok ("five stones"). It was present in Korea in the 7th century AD at least, and one story purports it to have been brought to Korea by a Chinese sage contemporaneous with Confucius (5th-6th century AD). Again, there's blurring of lines here, as whether it was just Go that was brought over, or if Gomoku was included, or if Gomoku was brought to Korea from Japan at a later date... thinking about it that way turns it all into a circular mess that makes my head hurt. Moving on.

Back to Japan, we are going to be jumping ahead a bit in time to pick up the story of Gomoku.

How much is "a bit?" Oh... about a thousand years.

This is unfortunately where we really run hard into the problem I mentioned earlier about the inextricable link between Go and Gomoku. For Japan, for the next 1,000 years, Gomoku's history is Go's history. All the attention is on Go, and the first story to even mention Gomoku as its own separate entity takes place in the 18th century. That's right - no writings, no mentions, not one peep about Gomoku for a thousand years.

Breaking Free

As I don't want to dive deep into Go's history here, I'll provide a brief overview, as the context is needed to know how Gomoku got to the point of unhooking itself from Go.

For about 500 years, Go found a comfortable little niche of prestige in the halls of royalty and nobility in Japan. It became a highly regarded pastime that also became quite competitive. One story, recounted by Edward Lasker in his 1960 book Go and Go-Moku: The Oriental Board Games, tells of a Japanese prince visiting China, about 100 years after the game's introduction to Japan, for the sole purpose of challenging China's best Go players.

Eventually, around the 13th-14th century, Go managed to escape the halls of nobility, and found popularity first amongst the military classes, and then the general public. Again, nothing is said about Gomoku. Go's popularity continued to boom, though. So much so, that once the Edo period commenced under the Tokugawa Shogunate, Go academies were being created for the purpose of training players in the now-ancient and revered art of Go.

Our first story of Gomoku comes now in the 18th century, as previously mentioned. The story goes that the spread of Gomoku as a separate game from Go can be attributed to a merchant named Kuwanaya Takeemon, who was famous for his skill at the game. He was a 10th generation oil merchant who regularly visited the noble Nijo family, and it's reported that he spread the knowledge of Gomoku through his business travels.

By the end of the 19th century, Gomoku had finally attained its own identity separate from its parent game. It had a book dedicated to it, the Gomoku Jōseki Collection, dated to 1856. It also began to go global, attracting the attention of the British Empire, with the Brits writing of the game later into the century. However, they didn't call it Gomoku - they instead called it Go-Bang or Goban. Eventually it would be distributed across the West in the 20th century under the names Spoil Five and Five in a Row.

However, we've yet to address the most significant event in Gomoku's history - Renju.

Renju

As Gomoku increased in popularity over the 19th century, many efforts were undertaken to try and "balance" the game. It had been discovered that, in what is called "freestyle Gomoku" - starting with a blank board - the player going first (black) is significantly advantaged. It's at the point of being a "solved game," if you knew how to play perfectly, you would never lose. So, various starting setups and rules were experimented with to try and find a nice balance where both black and white had about an equal chance of winning.

The problem was, that this version of Gomoku didn't have a name. There were a whole bunch of names being used, and it got to the point where nobody really seemed to like any of them very much.

Enter Ruikou Kuroiwa, a journalist and founder of the Japanese newspaper, Yorozu Chouhou. He decided to take it upon himself to find a new, respectable name for Gomoku that would remove the stigma attached to the old names. What he came up with was Renju, which literally means "connected pearls." The name was announced in Yorozu Chouhou on December 6, 1899, and has stuck ever since as the name for the globally recognised, professional variant of Gomoku.

Renju began to be played competitively further across the world as the 20th century progressed. Eventually, in 1988, the Renju International Federation (RIF) was founded, for the purpose of holding world championships. The inaugural championship was held in 1989, appropriately, in Kyoto. Since 2009, the championships have been run on a biannual basis. While there are other noteworthy variants of Gomoku played all around the world, none took off quite like Renju.

Video Game Gomoku

Looking into the digital world of Gomoku, it makes for reading quite similar to Hangman, in all honesty. A good amount of action in the 70s and 80s, and dropping off in interest afterwards, with few games being produced.

The first computer Gomoku appeared in 1972 as a BASIC, text-based game, written by Greg Thagard. This rendition of Gomoku plays a 9x9 board. In 1981, it was ported to the Sol-20 microcomputer, and is still playable today. The computer is slow, taking up to a minute to decide its moves, but is competent at the game...

Thagard's Gomoku, Sol-20 port.

...unlike 1973's Gomoko, by Peter Sessions. I've already waxed lyrical at the massive failure that that game's computer opponent is, so I'll spare you the details on that here. What this game introduces as an improvement on Thagard's game is a choice of board size, from the smallest 7x7 board, up to the Go-standard 19x19 board.

Quick reminder of how incompetent Gomoko is.

1976 saw three new Gomoku programs appear. However, only one of them was actually a game. That one ran on the Intel 8080 microprocessor, and was published by RBB Software Products. No credited author is known of. As for the other two... well, those were Gomoku-playing programs that participated in computer Gomoku competitions. Yes, just like how there were computer Chess competitions, where the brainiest boffins and computer scientists tried to develop the smartest, bestest Chess-playing program they could, there were likewise those who did the same with Gomoku. One of these, developed by D. Walden, managed third place in the 1976 championship.

1979 was the year where Gomoku saw the most attention from game developers, with a whopping five games releasing that year for all the brand-spanking new microcomputers that arrived only a year or two prior. The Apple II, Atari 8-bit line, TRS-80, Altair 8800 and Commodore PET all received versions of the game.

The 1980s saw the first Renju computer game appear - this one from a Japanese developer, released for the Apple II. 1980-83 saw several more Gomoku and Renju games appear - this time not limited to home computers, but there was also an arcade game, Gomoku Narabe, released in 1982, and Gomoku Narabe Renju by Nintendo for the Famicom/NES in 1983.

Of course, Nintendo had to make an appearance.

After that, the interest in video game Gomoku fell off hard. Only one game in 1988, and a mere handful across the 1990s and 2000s. And that brings us to the state of Gomoku video games today. Mind you, it's not much of a state at all. More of a ghost town, really. The most recent Gomoku game, Let's Go Gobang was, according to MobyGames, released in 2021 as a digital download on Windows and Nintendo Switch. Nothing else in five years (at the time of writing this article.) But, there are at least a handful of browser-based versions available to freely play that a quick Google search will bring up.

Endgame

Here ends the lesson on the history of Gomoku. As you've seen, it was so deeply intertwined with Go for much of its existence that, despite the evident antiquity of Gomoku, it has little historical evidence to show for it prior to the 18th century.

But, it finally managed to break free from the shadow of Go and become a internationally-regarded, competitive board game in its own right. Especially after the invention of Renju. The most recent world championship from 2025 was fully live-streamed on YouTube, for those curious on what the state of Gomoku as a sport looks like today. They stream six games simultaneously, so it can be a little tricky to keep track of everything, but it's all there.

The troubles with the historical evidence, and working across sources in two languages made this a more difficult assignment than this series' debut article on Hangman. On the flipside, I got to learn about a whole new competitive sport that I never knew existed before. That's the beauty of doing these broader, historical articles - I always learn something new. That makes the work tremendously rewarding to do.

What's next for this series depends on whatever project I complete next. Could be Tic-Tac-Toe, could be Hexapawn, or it could be something completely different. My workflow is still in a state of flux at the moment, with all the changes going on around here. So it could be a while.