A couple of titbits from an interview with 15-year-old Fujisawa Rina in the latest Go World. Recall that she'd just won her first title in June 2014, the new Aidu Chuo Hospital Cup, and is now the youngest ever female title holder (15 years 9 months, beating Xie Yimin's 16 years 4 months).

1. She wants to go and study in Korea and China because she's heard that there they immerse themselves in study from early morning, and that's the sort of environment she wants to be part of.

2. In five years time she hopes to be able to buy her own apartment. In ten years her goal is to be the top woman player but capable also of winning places in the top three leagues. Marriage is far from her thoughts - maybe when she's 30. Come what may, go is her immediate concern.

3. The significance of the Aidu Chuo Hospital Cup was that it was a two-day title match (five hours a day), a first for modern women. The press corps was out in force. After the first day's play she slept better than usual, whereas most players fret about the sealed move overnight. She thought that was because the match was at a busy spa and the hustle and bustle tired her out. But she did admit to feeling the strain of feeding the press sharks (my choice of words).

4. On the first day both players wore traditional dress, but not the usual gaudy kimonos female pros adopt in exhibition games, which got the press going. Both she and Okuda Aya wore undecorated haori jacket and hakama trousers, the formal dress men wear in title games, though one concession to femininity was that the jackets were in pastel colours (pink or red to my eyes, but women usually recoil in horror at my description of colours). But on Day 2 Rina chose to wear ordinary clothes because she was worried that the wide sleeves of the haori might cause problems with the stones during byoyomi. Although the game finished with a resignation after just 193 moves, both players were in byoyomi, incidentally.

All in all, she sounds like a very level-headed and modest but determined young lady. She's already mastered pro talk: "As you can see I was lucky. This was a game with lots to reflect on." "But," she added: "I have been confident of taking a title". With very young and personable stars of both sexes now prominent on the Japanese scene, we may see a surge of interest in go among young people there.

Thank you!

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“The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.” — Salvador Dali ★ Play a slooooow correspondence game with me on OGS?