I mentioned Oyama Toshiko in an earlier post, and said I would post a game by her. This is a Go Seigen game, so it has mass appeal straightaway for that reason alone. But it stood out for me for various other reasons.

One was that Go was contracted to provide a commentary for it (given here), for Igo Club, which was normally aimed at players at the weaker end of the spectrum (compared to Kido), yet he does not find a move before Black 148 worthy of a comment! Black's performance is certainly feisty, and the game does seem to flow rather well up to that point, perhaps as a result of being played slowly. The whole game occupied almost seven hours.

At this point (1937) Oyama Toshiko was not yet a pro - that would not happen until 1941 - but she was clearly a pre-pro, since she had been a pupil of Kita Fumiko since 1931 (she was sixteen at the time of the game).

Do you share my suspicion, based on Go's final comments, that he was hoping to engineer a win by 1 point, only to see that idea overturned by Black's late mistakes? Kita Fumiko was essentially his second mother in Japan and so he would probably want to show his gratitude via this teaching game by being kind to the pupil.

Hi John & Mark. Thank-you for all these.

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For how long was Go going under the name "Go Izumi"?

I'm sure Go found plenty of things worthy of comment before mv. 148, after all he had caught up about 2-stones handicap at this point. But who's to say why he didn't comment on them.

Perhaps Go had been trying for the one point win. It's a common goal for teachers who reach such a state in a game, esp. after a seven hour game! And after Oyama made some endgame mistakes, Go couldn't very well force the situation without it looking unnatural -- unlike a certain Shuei/Yasuhisa Nihon Igohai launch game.

If memory serves, I think the full story of the name Go Izumi is detailed in their book "Kamakura". I believe it was related to the pre-war tensions between Japan and China.