What is Hikaru no Go, the series Obata drew before Death Note?

Hikaru no Go was written by Yumi Hotta and drawn by Takeshi Obata, and ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from December 8, 1998 to July 14, 2003: 189 chapters in 23 volumes. A schoolboy, Hikaru Shindo, finds an old go board haunted by Sai, the ghost of a Heian-era master, and is dragged into the professional go world. The games themselves were supervised by a real professional, Yukari Umezawa, 5-dan, credited in early printings under the name Yoshihara.

The series did something nobody expected a board game manga to do. It is credited with popularizing go among young people in Japan and noticeably increasing the go-playing population around the world. It won the Shogakukan Manga Award and the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, passed 25 million copies in circulation, and Studio Pierrot's anime ran for 75 episodes from October 2001 to March 2003, with a New Year special in January 2004. It was also Obata's first work released in North America.

For this wing it matters for one more reason: Hikaru no Go was ending just as the Death Note pilot reached Obata's desk. The artist who had spent five years drawing stones, boards and school tournaments was about to spend three drawing gods of death.