Trying to shed light on the problems of one game by referencing other games is a double-edged sword. It is easy to focus on either the differences or the similarities and thus to lose sight of the whole. Shogi is an interesting case for that.
It's an intellectual board game that has co-existed with go in Japan for centuries. It even has a parallel professional structure today, and newspapers that sponsor go tournaments often sponsor shogi tournaments. But they are actually rather different, and it's interesting to examine how. I don't think the difference, at least in Japan, is that one is a national game and one is an international game. That is a difference imposed by foreigners. Go has been regarded as a national game of Japan for centuries: a 国技. They know it came from China, but in practice they no more think of that than we think of Persia or Spain when we play chess.
The differences are more to do with status. The western equivalent is chess versus draughts (checkers). Like draughts. shogi is an easier game to learn, easier to get the equipment for, and it is the game of young children, the game played at home or in school. Indeed, it is often not shogi that is being played. A shogi set is more often than not used for more trivial games such as hasamishogi, in the same way that our children use a draughts set (or even a chess set) for games like fox and geese. Go and chess are seen as harder and more intellectual, to the extent that either can be used as a symbol for intellectuals in books and films. This has always struck me as a bit odd, because I think writers and film makers too often mix up intellectualism with intelligence. In real life, chess and go, at a high level, are more symbolic of intelligent nerds than of true, widely cultured intellectuals. This is perhaps because getting to a high level demands single-minded devotion. But it is a simple fact of life that high intellectual status is accorded by ordinary folk to the games of chess and go. Games like soccer or golf or tennis or snooker quite possibly require, and certainly benefit from, application of high intelligence, but we don't normally praise the top exponents of these games as intellectuals. We see them as more rounded individuals, who have mastered the physical and psychological aspects of their games as much as they have been able to use their intelligence to get where they are. This is in stark contrast to how the typical go or chess champion is seen. They are just nerds.
Does this matter? Well, in journalism there is a mantra: "there's nowt as interesting as other folk." The way a news story is written is to focus on "who, what, when, where" - "who" comes first. Fiction writers often like to include a made-up newspaper story in their novels, and I've never yet seen one that would pass muster as a real newspaper story. The fictionalised versions usually start with "what" and very quickly bring in "how" and "why", which belong in a feature not news story.
But fiction writers do focus on people just as much, just in a different way. They present people - not computers, carboard boxes, spurtles or Ferraris - as having challenges and flaws. Even when they appear to use non-humans, say pigs as in Animal Farm, it is as a way of really representing humans.
All the other forms of entertainment, moves, opera, self-help books, cookery shows, Antarctica's Got Talent and so on, all focus on people. Even forms of entertainment where normal human interactions may seem at first to be absent, such as pop music or contemporary dance or symphonic music, are all quickly twisted by their fans into fan-clubs focusing on the singers, ballerinas or composers - people.
That is the background I look at when I think about go and chess.
I personally was captivated by the people in chess, notably Paul Morphy and Al-Biruni. The moves of the game were just a sideshow. Similarly in go, I was first fascinated by the fact that people of the past in Japan and China had such mastery over such a brain game. Although it's common to say that young people have a more international outlook nowadays, I'm not sure that's true. They just travel more. At least, I and many people of my and previous generations were just as fascinated by the rest of the world. Just go the university librarty stacka dn leaf through publications such as the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. It's just part of what drives all of us: curiosity.
So, if we take all that as a reasonable summary of human behaviour, even allowing for a few likely major personal differences, how would you proceed if you were a company director tasked with spending your advertising budget?
My stance would be to focus on people and status. Preferably both, but just one could do.
If the company I was director of looked at go 50 years ago, in Japan, I would say that associating myself with go could be a good move, because the game has a very status symbolising intelligence, and there's a good chance that that status will rub off on my company. I'd be a bit wary of highlighting the individual players too much, because they are perhaps a bit too nerdy (and too male?) But a title match demands rather more than mere nerdiness - stamina, psychological strength, innovation and creativity, etc - and all that plays into the status element. In journalistic terms, I'd feel we could cover all the question words: not just who, what, when and where but even how and why.
If I had to make the same assessment now, I'd be glum. The status of the game has dropped in some ways, partly because Japan has fallen so far behind internationally. Lack of such success also affects the people element. There is some upward movement as regards women and children doing better at the game, so the all-important "who" question is being answered to some degree, but where are the real Japanese stars?
AI also has a powerful impact on the status of the game. At the pro level, it's hard to big someone up as having high intellectual status if it's so easy for any amateur to point out "but Katago says..." There is such a tight closeness between go pros and go amateurs who have equal access to AI that makes a huge difference with many other activities. When Usain Bolt runs the 100 metres, nobody listens to those who say motorbikes or horses can go faster. There's just no closeness of fit. But when a nerdy 25-kyu says Katago plays X where Ke Ji played Y, everybody listens, though many while grinding their teeth. When the nerdy 25-kyu adds that you get X1 instead of X if you use network XY529fFCV:PUHYB, virtually nobody listens. And if that's in connection with a commentary on the game, I'd predict that listeners or readers would switch off faster even then people like me who can hit the Skip Ads button on Youtube faster than Usain Bolt.
And I'm still just talking about Japan. It's even worse here in the West, because we've never had the solid and widespread awareness of go as a game of high intellectual status. And virtually nobody's heard of Go Seigen, Yi Ch'ang-ho or Sin Chin-seo (or Oyama Meijin in shogi - he was once as well known to ordianry Japanese as Babe Ruth is to Americans). And the nerd rot set in long before AI. In the early days there was the obsession with grades, in particular number-only grades. There was the obsession with SOS, SODOS and other tournament arcana. And don't get me started on the obsession with rulesets. Or variants. Now it's AI. All these obsessions create a certain feel for the culture of the game, in which the notion of "people" is largely absent. And that's never been one that the Oriental go-playing cultures have truly shared. It is even my experience that these obsessions have been resented there, even while the chance to make international friendships has been welcomed. I therefore expect the saying "East is East and West is West" to retain its fundamental truth for a very long time.
I do remain optimistic that the Oriental countries will keep go's flag flying in some way. They've emerged from dark tunnels before. But I don't see a significant western element in that process.
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