What is the biggest, the longest, the mostest in pro go? These pages will tell you the answers as far as I know them. Of course, if you can tell us of any new records we would be delighted to add or update any item.
The record items listed so far will be "turned on" one by one, so please make sure you visit again soon. We focus on competitive pro games, of course, but with the odd digression.
Shortest, Longest, Oldest, First, Most ... and many more.
MOST FAMOUS PEOPLE TO PLAY GO
Many people who have become famous in other fields have been avid go players - some have even been excellent go players. Here is a selection. Can you add to these records?
SAINT NICHIREN
Nichiren (1222-82) was a Buddhist monk who founded a sect still popular in Japan. He was rather the opposite of the stereotype Buddhist: he aggressively denounced other forms of the religion, armed his followers and recruited mainly among the lower ranks of the samurai. Which is maybe why he played go. The monks who were later to become the first official go players at the Tokugawa court were his followers, and this may explain survival of the game record shown here. It is regarded as the oldest game in Japan.
SHIBUKAWA SHUNKAI
Shibukawa (1639 - 1715) was the eldest son of Yasui I, whose name (as Yasui Santetsu II) he bore at first. In 1657, under the guardianship of Yasui Sanchi, he began to receive an official stipend and, after being appointed as the family heir in 1659, began to play in castle games. According to Honinbo Dosaku he was 7-dan. However, he was also a distinguished Confucian scholar and the foremost expert of his time on astronomy. A revised version of the calendar (the first by a Japanese) is due to him, at imperial request, and because of his involvement with this from 1683 he ceased playing castle go as Yasui Santetsu II. His new Jokyo era calendar was issued in 1684 and was used for 70 years.
He changed his name to Shibukawa Sukezaemon Shunkai (Shibukawa was the original name of the Yasui family) in 1702 and retired in 1711. He published many books on astronomy. His astronomy inspired a famous castle game, given here, against Dosaku in 1671 when he played first move on the centre point (but lost by 9 points). It is from this that the popularity term tengen (origin of Heaven) for the centre point is believed to have come, although Shibukawa himself would have known it as an ancient Chinese term.
SAKAI IWAMI NO KAMI TADAYOSHI
With a name like that you're bound to be a big cheese, but we venture to suggest that the true fame of Lord Sakai Tadayoshi of Iwami is that he was a gamekeeper turned poacher. Although responsible for official go in Edo Japan as Commissioner of Shrines and Temples, he also appeared in eight castle games from 1763 to 1780, the first amateur to do so. This game, on four stones, is against Honinbo Satsugen.
KIM OK-KYUN
Kim Ok-kyun (1851 - 1894) was a radical Korean politician who originally went to Japan to study but was later exiled there. Befriended by Honinbo Shuei (from whom he took 6 stones) and Hon'nbo Shusai. He even took a Japanese name, the interesting choice of Iwata Shusaku. He was assassinated in Shanghai by Korean agents. The game given here, against Shuei, is also the oldest game involving a Korean.
TOKUGAWA YOSHINOBU
This gentleman, also known as Tokugawa Keiki (1837 - 1913-11-22), was the 15th and last shogun in Japan. After being unsuccessfully embroiled in the Restoration wars, he lived in retirement, first in Sunpu then in Tokyo. He was by far the strongest of all the shoguns at go and was close to professional strength. For example, as here, he beat Kita Fumiko with two stones handicap.
DUAN QIRUI
Duan Zhiquan (1865 - 1936), as he is also known, was a warlord who dominated Beijing politics after the fall of the Manchu dynasty and who was provisional president of China from 1924 to 1926. He was a great patron of go, in particular of the top Chinese player Gu Shuiru and the young Go Seigen. He invited various Japanese players to Beijing when premier in 1918 - many of his games with Takabe Dohei were published in Wenqiuyin-she Yiping - Commentaries on Games of the Wenqiuyin Go Society.
He was good enough to play Segoe Kensaku on two stones, but he liked to boast he was the strongest player in Beijing and it was the usual practice amongst those he patronised in China to let him win. His latter years were spent in Shanghai where he continued to support go. We give here two games, one against Takabe Dohei and another against Honinbo Shusai.
PRINCE SU
Prince Su was one of eight hereditary princes of the Manchu dynasty at the time of its fall. But he was also one of the leading voices in the new regime and was a minister of the Chinese Republic. His role was the only one among the traditional leaders that brought him into intimate contact with foreigners. He got on well with them and allowed his palace to be used for the protection of native Christians during the Boxer Rebellion.
He made enemies among his peers because he had a reputation for honesty, and this brought about his partial downfall. He was made Collector of Customs, a post others saw as tailor made for applying squeeze. However, the public accusations used by his rivals were that he rode in a foreign carriage, built a house in the foreign style, used foreign furniture, employed an English tutor for his boys, and opened a school for the women and girls of his family. He was also a host to foreign go players, though we are not aware that that was used against him. The game here is against Honinbo Shusai.
HATOYAMA ICHIRO
Hatoyama (1883-01-01 ~ 1959-03-07) was the scion of a political dynasty and governed Japan as Prime Minister from 1954 to 1956 under the banner of the newly formed Liberal Democratic Party. In 1936 he played Felix Dueball of Germany in the first international telegraph game, given here. Hatoyama was then amateur 2-dan (and Education Minister). He later reached 6-dan. Dueball, who died in 1970 at the age of 90 was a pioneer of go in Germany, and Europe as a whole.
PU ZHONGYE
Pu was an elder cousin of the last Emperor of China, Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, who was also a go player. He played Go Seigen on two stones in 1935 in the game here before the Emperor. Go also played a game against Kitani in front of the same Emperor, but that record is lost.
MURAMATSU SHOFU
Muramatsu (1889-09-21 - 1961-02-13) was a well known novelist in Japan and keen amateur player, friendly with Go Seigen from whom he took four stones, as in the game here. He attended part of the Kamakura 10-game match between Go and Kitani Minoru. His go influence extended to his son, Muramatsu Takashi. (1917-05-22 - 1982-11-15) who was a go writer and reporter.
CHEN YI
Chen Yi (1901-08-26 - 1972-01-06) was a Chinese Communist military commander in the 1930s and 1940s, close to Mao Zedong. He was foreign minister from 1958 to 1966, and later vice premier. He was a go patron, and most notably fostered the career of Nie Weiping. It could even be argued that modern Chinese go would not have existed without him. Nevertheless, during the war he famously said, "If you do that sort of thing [play go] you cannot achieve revolution" and threw his go board into the Yangzi River. He suffered badly in the Cultural Revolution in 1966, as did many go players. The game here is an early one against Guo Tisheng.
EDWARD LASKER
Many go players, especially Americans, owe their introduction to the game to Edward Lasker and his book "The Game of Go", which has also appeared as "Go and Go Moku". This endorsement of go by a famous chess master in the early 1950s when it was barely known outside the East gave it a great boost. Lasker (not to be confused with world chess champion Emmanuel Lasker, who also said nice things about go) learnt the game in 1905 and played often with Felix Dueball.
He emigrated to the USA in 1921 and his first contact with Japanese players seems to have been there in the 1950s, when a party including the pro Fujita Goro 6-dan looked him up. It appears that the Japanese did confuse him with Emmanuel, but they went after even bigger fish. Fujita presented a go board to Einstein at Princeton University. The introduction was via Einstein's famous Japanese assistant, Yano Kentaro. Fukuda is said to have played against Lasker on six stones, but the game here is against a Japanese amateur 3-dan in Chicago. It was deemed noteworthy enough in Japan to be published with a commentary by the then Honinbo, Takagawa Kaku, who concluded that Lasker was a player of "considerable skill".
MIHORI SHO
Mihori Tadashi (1910 - 1996-10-07), or politely Sho, was the doyen of go writers in Japan, and, unusually, it was that that launched him on a much more high powered career as a mini media tycoon. He began writing for the Yomiuri Shinbun in 1932 and became known for his reports there on the 10-game Kamakura match between Go Seigen and Kitani Minoru. He used the pen names Fukumenshi IV (1938-41) and Okame Sanjin. But late in his career, falling back on his training as an economics graduate of Tokyo University, he became vice-president of Hochi Shinbun (1963) and later moved in radio and television.
Yet he never gave up writing about go, right up until his death, working as freelance from 1967. The game here was against his fellow go reporter Yasunaga Hajime. Yasunaga, although probably even more famous than Mihori as the strongest amateur in the world until the emergence of the modern Chinese, actually held a 6-dan pro diploma from the Kansai Ki-in and he regularly beat young pros on handicaps. We can see therefore that Mihori was a tolerably strong player.
KAWABATA YASUNARI
(1899-06-14 - 1972-04-16) Nobel prize winning novelist, whose oeuvre includes Meijin (first instalment published: 1942; book form: 1954; translated as Master of Go, 1972), a slightly fictionalised account of Honinbo Shusai's retirement game with Kitani Minoru. Though almost an ever-present at the famous Yomiuri matches, he was not the literary world's best go player. Here he is up against Sakata Eio.
ENDO SHUSAKU
Endo (1923 - 1996) was one of Japan's major novelists, widely translated. His Catholicism gave him an unusual insight into traditional Japanese ways as well as making him more accessible to the West. But he was a traditionalist when it came to recreation. In 1994 he published a record of some of his games with leading literary personages and the female pro Shigeno Yuki, now resident in Milan. It was called Kou uteba go wa heta ni naru - Play like this and your go will get worse. This game is from there.
HABU YOSHIHARU
Shogi sensation Habu, born 27 September 1970, became a pro at the age of 15, and not long after cleaned up just about every title going, most of them at the same time. Open-air displays of his matches were aired in Tokyo, a sight not seen since the famous Go Seigen games of the 1930s. We have even seen one major Osaka bookstore that devoted an entire front window to his books, and his life has already been encapsulated in manga (comic) form.
It did not go amiss with his adoring public that he married a famous actress, but like most go and shogi pros he found that marriage was like joseki: keeps you in a corner and makes you a couple of handicap notches weaker, and the last time we looked he only held four of the top seven shogi titles. But he plays go, too. Here is a game against Kato Masao that was specially commissioned for a coffee-table book on go.
DANIEL T. BARRY
Yes, the astronaut. And in the official press release issued by NASA, this is how Dr Barry is introduced: "Born December 30, 1953, in Norwalk, Connecticut, but considers South Hadley, Massachusetts, to be his hometown. Enjoys flying, Go, basketball, running." As both a physicist and physician he is obviously a man of some discernment. He was able to combine the first two of his interests during on the space flight of STS-72 Endeavour (11-20 January 1996) during which the crew retrieved the Space Flyer Unit that been launched from Japan 10 months earlier.
Daniel T. Barry Photo with permission from NASA
He also performed a 6 hour spacewalk, but most important of all he was the first person to play a game of go in space. He did not contest a game, but played over a famous game by Shusai. Shortly afterwards, he visited Japan and was feted by the Nihon Ki-in. He played new pro Umezawa Yukari in the game given here, and was awarded an honorary diploma.
