This is the first of ten parts devoted to a ten-game match held almost 50 years ago. I will be describing the atmosphere and the behaviour of the players rather than commenting on the moves.

The reason is that many visitors to the MSO web site will be games players but not necessarily go players, and I think it will be of interest to them to see how the other half lives. I have heard athletes say that the greatest pleasure of an Olympiad, apart from winning a gold, is mixing with competitors from other disciplines and other lands.

The fact that the match is almost half a century old is neither here nor there. All the elements, even the underlying tension between Tokyo and Osaka, are still present in the modern game. There are differences really only of degree - time limits are now a fraction shorter, for instance.

Another good reason is that, I am fairly certain, this match has never been described in English before, even though it is a match that many go players would like to see. The particular stimulus to choose it for this series came from a go fan in the Czech Republic, Tom Koranda.

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Game 1, held in Osaka on 17 August 1954.

First a little background. Fujisawa Kuranosuke had become the first person to reach the highest rank of 9-dan in tournament play in 1949. Until then, under the title of Meijin, it had been the preserve of a single player appointed for life. Although all Meijins were strong players they did not win the accolade through tournaments, but usually through a combination of winning a single challenge match and political manouevring.

As Japan gradually became exposed to western notions, this was increasingly seen as an anachronism, and the relatively new guild of professional go players, the Nihon Ki-in, instituted instead, in the 1920s, an objective system of earning promotion by winning games in a special tournament called the Oteai.

Although the Oteai won strong support, after the Second World War new tensions arose. One of the strongest and most persistent was the resentment of Osaka (or rather the whole Kansai region - West Japan - of which it is the capital) over the increasing centralisation of businesses and institutions in Tokyo (East Japan).

Kansai go players took matters into their own hands and formed a breakaway guild in 1949 called the Kansai Ki-in. Their numbers were small, and sponsors were rapidly moving to Tokyo, yet they survived (and still do) by the skin of their teeth. The major reason was the success over the board of one man - Hashimoto Utaro. In two epic matches he overcame the man from Tokyo.

The challenge issued
When Fujisawa's promotion was announced from Tokyo, therefore, the Kansai Ki-in threw down a challenge. It was published in their official journal "Go" (No. 3, 1949), rather pompously in the old Japanese that was supposed to have been swept away by the post-war reforms, and read: 

"Whereas the promotion of Mr Fujisawa, who has acquired the promotion points stipulated in the current Oteai, is for the time being acknowledged, in view of the importance of the unprecedented rank of 9-dan, there is clearly dissatisfaction as expressed in the opinions of the public at large at the wilful centralising tendencies of the Nihon Ki-in, and therefore it is desirable that Mr. Fujisawa should effect a match with a representative professional go player affiliated to the Kansai Ki-in." 

That player would have been Hashimoto 8-dan.

The Nihon Ki-in took not a blind bit of notice. But over the next few years it was to have its own problems with Fujisawa. Despite being the first 9-dan, he knew that no-one could be regarded as the top player in Japan until he had beaten Go Seigen, the Chinese prodigy who had been resident in Japan since childhood. 

Almost out of embarrassment, the Nihon Ki-in had given Go a special promotion to 9-dan in 1950 following Fujisawa's elevation. Fujisawa became obsessed with playing Go, and two ten-game matches were arranged by the Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper, in 1952 and 1953. He lost both (Hashimoto also lost one). 

But in the course of playing them, Fujisawa neglected his obligations to the Nihon Ki-in, refusing to play in their major tournaments. Unable to justify his absence by winning a match against Go, he felt obliged to resign from the Nihon Ki-in. He was then effectively unemployed.

Desperate to play, he importuned the chairman of the Yomiuri Shinbun, Shoriki Matsutaro. Shoriki agreed to support a match and so authorised Fujisawa to challenge Hashimoto, now also 9-dan. The delight in Kansai is all too easy to imagine, though as it turned out, Hashimoto's acceptance was driven more by sympathy for a struggling fellow professional.

Private code
There was great puzzlement on the first day of the game. Fujisawa, being the challenger, had had to travel to Osaka. The game was to be held in the Kobun Club on the top 12th floor of the Dai-Ichi Mutai Life Insurance Building, then the highest in Japan. 

This was the haunt of Kansai businessmen but the entire premises had been specially made over for the game. A three-mat playing room was laid with fresh tatami mats, giving off their greenish sheen, and an extravagantly expensive board and stones awaited the two combatants.

Hashimoto arrived first, just before the official start. Fujisawa arrived a little later. Hashimoto smiled at him: "How did you get on yesterday, afterwards?" "Oh, it was just fine," replied Fujisawa. The bystanders were baffled. This was supposed to be war, but the two generals were speaking amiably in a private code.

Fujisawa had arrived the day before. He wanted to visit the Koshien, the main baseball stadium in Osaka, but as he had never been, Hashimoto took him there. Hashimoto had an evening appointment, so had to leave his companion for the rest of the day, and that is what he was asking about.

But as soon as the two players sat down for the game, at 9 a.m. precisely, the atmosphere changed. Like well trained actors they swapped their smiles for the grim faces of samurai about to enter battle.

Then a very strange thing happened. Hashimoto, normally known as one of the quickest players after Go Seigen, began to play very slowly, whereas Fujisawa - notorious as a slow player; he once spent a record 213 minutes on one move - began to play quickly. They were allocated 10 hours each, with overtime of one minute a move.

Hashimoto was White. A special feature of the ten-game matches sponsored by the Yomiuri was that they were played with no komi - the allowance of about 5 points that Black nowadays has to give White to compensate for the advantage of playing first. To win with White despite that was seen as huge psychological blow - to do it in the first game had a crushing impact. Hashimoto was therefore steeling himself to try especially hard to win.

For his part, Fujisawa was desperate to avoid the shame of losing with Black, especially as the challenger. To do that he was forcing himself to play quickly. Over and over again he had got himself into time trouble in his games against Go Seigen. It was reckoned that he had lost several winnable games for this reason.

Battle resumes
When the game was resumed on the second day, the same friendly then sombre preparations for battle took place. Hashimoto took his seat first and began to wipe the empty board. After a short while, Fujisawa entered the room, and after bowing in greeting, also began to wipe the board. "I've already done that," said Hashimoto, so they began instead to replay the moves from the previous day, clicking the stones onto the board almost in tune with the large drops of rain splattering in the windows. The rain brought a refreshing coolness to the sultry air.

The closing position recreated, the sealed move was revealed and the relentless grind of combat began afresh.

A new batch of Kansai players had arrived to discuss the game in what might be called the adjacent press room but for the fact that the only press allowed were from the Yomiuri. The public would normally only hear about the game as it was drip fed through the newspaper, a few moves each day. 

But with interest so high, Kubouchi Shuichi 7-dan and Hashimoto Shoji 6-dan (no relation) were leading discussion groups in Osaka, while Tainaka Shin 7-dan and Fujiki Hitomi 5-dan were doing the same in nearby Kobe. In the press room Sato Sunao 6-dan and Kariya Hiraku 6-dan were in the thick of a crowd trying to guess the next move. 

Almost invariably they were wrong, but sighs of admiration could be heard as the moves actually played were relayed back. It was no lack of skill that made it hard for the pros to guess the moves. The main problem was that Hashimoto was not playing his usual game. Apart from playing slowly he was playing a new style. And that wasn't helping him.

Black (Fujisawa), taking advantage of the lack of komi, was playing a tightly controlled game. Hashimoto was trying to make things happen. But when he played the cut at 108, the surprise was there but the sighs of admiration were absent. Despondency took hold among the Kansai crowds. This was not how Hashimoto sensei normally plays!

In the end the game was won and lost on the clock. Fujisawa used almost his full allowance, taking 9 hours 52 minutes. But he had used it wisely. He had not even flinched when the game recorder Kosakada Koji 4-dan had announced "30 minutes left" then "20 minutes left." Hashimoto, who had been slower than Fujisawa until move 60, had used 8 hours 6 minutes, but he had lost by 3 points - less then the usual komi but a loss nevertheless.

Then recriminations began. Some disappointed fans expressed the view - go fans often wrote to or telephoned the newspapers in those days - that Hashimoto, as the older man (47), should never have accepted the challenge of a younger man (35). But there were still nine games to go, and though Hashimoto was normally a quick player, he was also a slow starter. Game 2 was to be in Tokyo on 24 September.

Game 1 in sgf format is available here. To download, right-click and choose to save the link on your machine. The moves are also shown on the following diagram.

White: Hashimoto Utaro 9-dan Black: Fujisawa Kuranosuke 9-dan
Game 1 of 10-game uchikomi match sponsored by Yomiuri Shinbun
Played at the Kobun Club, Osaka, on 17 and 18 August 1954
No komi, 10 hours each

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