This topic came up some time ago. I also discussed it with John Power, and he undertook to ask about in in the Nihon Ki-in.

Like me, he has not sat in on ordinary games of Japanese pros, just title matches. I have sat in on ordinary shogi games but it didn't occur to me at the time to take any notice of the recording arrangements (though I am certain that no-one was recording games live there).

First I will just quote what John had to say (the shougaibu is the liaison or PR department):

I had a chance to talk to a Ms. Suzuki who has been in the teaika of the shougaibu at the Ki-in for many years. The picture is a little mixed.

In general, players use chess clocks for the game (afraid I forgot to ask if they have a byo-yomi function; they must have). It's assumed that the winner makes a record of the game on his computer later, but there's no duty to do so and no duty to give a copy of the record to the Ki-in. When Go Weekly wants a copy of a game record, they ask the winner and apparently usually get it.

The result is that the Ki-in has records of only a fraction of the games played every year.

Of course, all league games have game recorders and timekeepers plus the other games in the final rounds of tournaments that the newspapers have decided (in advance) that they want to publish in their go columns. Also, Suzuki said, former titleholders usually have game recorders. Suzuki specifically mentioned Rin and Kudo as examples. She also added that every game of Rin's is recorded (she emphasized this, so it seems a special effort is being made). It seems likely that current titleholders would have all their games recorded too, but I forgot to ask this (I just dropped in on her for a few minutes in her office).

At one time, the teaika used to pay players a couple of hundred yen each for game records submitted, but this practice was discontinued decades ago (Suzuki and another employee who was there were answering my questions, but it was just off the top of their heads). My guess is this applies to the 70s, because that's when I saw pros writing out game records. There used to be a box of game records on a counter, since removed, that ran along the front of the room (3rd or 4th floor), presumably all the games that had been recorded officially. Every Friday, inseis would come along, including James Kerwin, to make copies.

So records are pretty spotty. Among them, the pros would have a pretty big collection, but no one is trying to compile a unified collection. Suzuki referred to the copyright issue and mentioned that people overseas just disregard the question of copyright.

Some pros have big collections. I've included a reference in Go World to Sakai Hideyuki's collection of over 40,000 games on his PC.

He later added:

I checked with Ms. Suzuki. The tournament clocks in use at the Ki-in have a byo-yomi function. The tournaments don't use sudden death (except at the end of byo-yomi, of course).

What I can add to that is also a little mixed. It is certain that in the early days of time allowances they were based on sudden death. I believe that this persisted in the Oteai till after the war.

There is also a fascinating account by a Kansai Ki-in insei who wrote an article on "A day in the life of a scorekeeper". This relates to practice in the 1970s, and of course in the Kansai Ki-in (I'm unsure whether it would be the same in the Nihon Ki-in).

He describes the scene for ordinary games, not title matches. For that reason, he and the other inseis were responsible for recording two games each, and also for the timekeeping. A title match would have one or even two players for one game.

The inseis would generally be excited because they were allowed to stay overnight at the Ki-in, and also because they got the chance to study pro games live. They also got a fee! The day would begin with a buzzer at 10 a.m. at which point all games were deemed to start. Play proceeded until 11.45 when another buzzer sounded. This was the lunch break, which lasted till 12.30. Lunch would be in the nearby coffee shops.

Play resumed with the 12.30 buzzer, but by about 1.30 the combined effects of lunch and the boredom of waiting for slow pros to play would make the inseis nod off. At this point, a pro would turn and offer the insei a drink - this meant giving him the money to go to the vending machines for coffee or a soda. Coffee was preferred for obvious reasons.

The afternoon session was long and was brought to an end by a buzzer at 5.30. Not all pros went to eat - some just read a newspaper or magazine. The dinner break was also 45 minutes long and was ended by a buzzer at 6.15. This was the last buzzer until the following morning. At this point the inseis really were suffering and muttering to themselves "Hayo owarehen ka naa" - can't we get this with over quickly?

Byoyomi usually didn't start until this session (typical time limits would be five hours each with one minute byoyomi). When it did start, the inseis would count out "50 seconds, one, two, three..." but pros would exclaim things like "A itatata" - Oh my God, which could throw off the count, and in addition the inseis had to record the moves, so all in all we can infer the count often stretched a few seconds.

Games often finished around midnight, but were usually followed immediately by a post mortem - the best part for those inseis who could stay awake. The pros would then disappear off to bars for a late-night snack and drink.

This was written about by the unknown insei in 1987 with the clear implication that it was no longer so at that time, but what the changes were I don't know. Probably saving on the inseis' fees was one change, and so perhaps a change to the Nihon Ki-in system as described above was introduced.


John Power also described seeing one pro, whose name I will omit but he's a 9-dan, who had the habit of catching up by recording several of his games at once in the Nihon Ki-in restaurant. As he got stuck on one game he would switch to another and return to the first one later. Given the enormous differences in early games in the Japan-China go exchanges, which were recorded afterwards by the Japanese and Chinese sides separately, we can be reasonably sure that a lot of games did not happen quite the way the historical record says they did.