I can't remember the details now, but there were ructions within the Nihon Ki-in at least a couple of years ago over the server issue.

It was something like this: a director of the Ki-in negotiated a deal with a Korean server, Cyberoro I think, which was not just about amateurs playing online but also about swapping records of pro games country to country. There was, somewhere in the mix, a further tie-up with a Chinese server which involved pro game swaps. The idea was that each country would respect each other's copyright of the games, the server company providing the protection. Copyright here meant, in practice, first publication rights, I think, but the other Chinese servers and their users rebelled en masse and blew that idea out of the water.

The Japanese ructions were to do with a different matter. There was a nationalistic faction inside the Nihon Ki-in that took the view that it was wrong to go to a foreign (Korean) company even for a better deal when a Japanese company (Pandanet) was available. As far as I can recall, the negotiators declared that the deal had to go through because it was already agreed, but the director concerned resigned as a palliative. I lost interest and lost track, so don't trust this account, but it made the national press for those who do want to track it down.

Certainly, since then, Korean companies have shown a keen interest in marketing in Japan, and the go magazines don't seem at all nationalistic about this. Cyberoro and Tygem seem to get plenty of mentions, though I can't pretend to have taken much notice.

Now it's only the top boards in newspaper sponsored events, I believe.

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"Those who calculate greatly will win; those who calculate only a little will lose, but what of those who don't make any calculations at all!? This is why everything must be calculated, in order to foresee victory and defeat."-The Art of War

Pandanet is the "official" server of the Kansai Kiin, so they use it pretty extensively.

There is commentary on major title matches, but you have to use the Japanese client to see it. I'm not sure how it gets sent, and I haven't been curious enough to check the telnet logs. It could probably be added to other clients easily enough if the right character set is used.