A movie about the first head of the Yasui. With Aoi Miyzaki. Another great thing is that Joe Hisaishi will be handling the soundtrack.
http://asianfanatics.net/forum/topic/75 ... -meisatsu/

awesome. I hope we get to see it here in the west.

Instant sell.

I forgot to mention, the movie will probably focus more on the calendar making than Go, but Honinbo Dosaku an other Go figure at the time will also be in the movie.

Normally forum members are red hot on picking up previous links, but ardour seems to have been quenched lately A lot of regulars seem to have gone AWOL, come to that.

Anyway, I posted the following some time ago elswhere on L19:

Those whose interest in go transcends the latest 4-4 point joseki may wish to note a new book Tenchi Meisatsu (Insights into the Universe) by Ubukata To in Japan. It is the result of 16 years of research into the life of Shibukawa Shunkai, who go players may know better as Yasui Santetsu II. The book has already won the 2010 Booksellers' Grand Prize and the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize.

As a 17th century go player Shibukawa was said by Dosaku to be of 7-dan level, but he is better known in Japan as the foremost expert of his time on astronomy, at which he became expert by studying the latest Chinese books based on imported European principles, and by making his own astronomical observations.

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. His new Jokyo era calendar was issued in 1684 and was used for 70 years. His reward was to be appointed by the shogunate to the Astronomical Institute (Tenmonkata) and in that capacity he changed his name to Shibukawa (the original name of the Yasui family) in 1702 and retired in 1711-XII. He published many books on astronomy. His astronomy supposedly inspired a famous castle game against Dosaku in 1671 when he played first move on the centre point (but lost by 9 points). It is said that from this that the go term tengen (origin of heaven) may come.

Ubukata's interest in Shibukawa is precisely because of a shared interest in calendars. In fact the Ubu part of the very peculiar penname is a calendrical term, meaning "beginning", and the last part will also be familiar from the sexagesimal calendar. You will infer from this that the book (a novelised version of Shibukawa's life) is not really a go book, and in fact Ubukata professes not to play go (his normal genres are SF and manga). Still, it does entwine go into the story line, and at 475 pages for only 1890 yen this is a book that will impress the socks off anyone perusing your bookshelf, even if left unread. It is published by Kadokawa.

Incidentally, since Ubukata spent part of his childhood in Nepal and seems to have acquired an interest in calendars from that time, it would be fascinating to hear what he thinks of An Yeong-i's musings on the possible influence of the lotag chuni (the Tibetan zodiac) on the 12 starting stones in Tibetan go.

One point I didn't make is that Ubukata's research suggests that the correct reading of Shibukawa's name was Harumi, not Shunkai, but it will take some time before the go world fully catches up with that.

You can infer from the book that go will not be the main focus of the film.

I`ve just seen the film 天地明察 (Tenchi Meisatsu) at the cinema! Actually it was a lucky accident because I did not know anything about it in advance, and my friend and I chose it because there were no other interesting-looking films on.

I could not believe it (in an extremely agreeable way) when suddenly the main character (Yasui) went off to play a castle game with Honinbo Dosaku. The game began with tengen, and caused an uproar; but the shogun was intrigued and delighted by the new move, and the game continued in a very exciting fashion. This being fictionalised, I have just checked the game record of the real game (http://www.kyoto.zaq.ne.jp/momoyama/Go/Story19.html), and found the one shown in the film was somewhat different, and also that the real game concluded, while the film one was interrupted...by an unexpected solar eclipse.

Go actually features quite prominently in the film, as is Dosaku`s friendship with Yasui Santetsu. Of course, the astronomy is the main focus, but go certainly has much more than a bit part, and you`ll love the 17th-century demonstration boards for the viewing public.

The Japanese was generally too hard for me to catch, but fortunately the story is easy enough to follow from other cues, so don`t be afraid to watch it if you happen to be in Japan or see the DVD in the shops in due course.

Also, there are some imperial ministers who dress and act in Heian style. This will give your imagination some extra help when trying to picture what Sai and his times might have been like.

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I recall reading recently, but don't recall where, that the game was intentionally fictionalized. (maybe a TMark, NewInGo article?)

The latest Shukan Go had a lot of info about it. I only glanced at it briefly. Takao Shinji helped with some of the go stuff and they published one teaching game he did with someone related to the movie, I think the main actor.

Santetsu's masterpiece.

Found at http://mignon.ddo.jp/assembly/mignon/go ... 62609.html

Unmarked comments based on comments at that site.

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