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.

A point worth repeating, and Im guilty of all but AI. But to anyone who pays attention this is the truth. I think there are benefits to the large computer crows in the western sphere of the game, and as someone who is allergic to any serious type of programming I nothing but admiration and respect for the number people. But most normal people do not find their obsessions with those aspects anywhere near as fascinating as they do.

My main gripe is when percieved lack of success of the game is attributed to a lack of positive factors when in reality it is perception by often biased outsiders of negative factors. Although perhaps every now and then those negative perceptions are not biased but actually true. This is why it is often the case that rapid growth for a period of time. At least in the west, constantly underestimate how judgemental and even shallow outsiders can be in a world where time is of the essence and YouTube shorts exist, even though I can garauntee we are all probably like that with other things we don't know. If the game suddenly boomed among a population of the weirded 5% of Anime types, most people here would understand how that could be a double-edged sword. If the population of the 1% of Amine weirdos swelled so much in the 囲碁 community means that the high population makes the culture difficult to change, then growth would stop completely when an equilibrium the maximum number of Anime weirdos are hit, and the the outside perception would mean no one gets in and the high population means changing culture is nigh impossible and further growth is forever doomed. Then perhaps we could agree that it have been better off not promoting the game if we knew distribution of type of people we're promoting it to is small. Yet this is lost on people when it applies to their group, perhaps because they falsely believe it's to do with "good" and "bad" when it's only to do with STYLE. The behaviour whenever there are crumbs of 囲碁 promotion is not good, one of the most fundamental aspects of 囲碁 is tactical gains do not necessarily mean strategic ones and vice versa, yet this attitude is almost NEVER applied to 바둑 promotion. And the AlphaGo period was the one I found most cringey. I couldn't for the life of me understand how it could lead to sustained growth in the game when the computer crowd is already heavily overepresented in the west, in fact when it comes to computers of the game we have been ahead of Asia for years, KataGo is an example. Yet very few in the west sems to have my reservations on AlphaGo's ability to promote 바둑. And then it's somehow considered a mystery that exactly what I expected to happen happened. We should focus 100 on making the 바둑 community in all countries more representative of the distribution of normal people. And I don't mean just the most surface level traits to tick on an identity politics questonnaire, even though they are important, but also interests. One positive trend is MBTI one in the pro 바둑 community in Korea, extra points since it was made by a family of Women! Considering matching playing style to MBTI was ne of the first things I did when I learned 바둑 I'd say there's huge potential there for the KBA to look into. .

Without listing qualifications I would probably be labeled an intellectual by most people and also a nerd. At different times in my life I have been fascinated by chess and by go. Even though now I don't actually play either game, I still follow the games. John Fairbairn's essay on people rang a bell for me. In both cases of chess and go I was attracted by the culture of the games and the people I read about in books and magazines. Stories about chess players such as Alekhine, Lasker, Morphy, and the characters like Tartakower, made the game interesting. Chess heroes Botvinnik, Keres, the Soviet players, Reuben Fine, and Fischer were interesting as people and supported my interest in chess. As I moved out into the secular chess world I encountered people who were post world war II immigrants in chess clubs or at tournaments for whom the game represented a cultural artifact connected with their own life struggles. It seems now that chess has lost the cultural fascination I enjoyed sixty or seventy years ago.

As for go, I started playing because of attraction to cultural things. I read Meijin[i] by Kawabata and picked up the sense of decline but also the idea that a [i]kishi was an artist, with high standards and respect for the game as a reflection of human values. There was no way to play except face-to-face and go clubs were busy so playing became a way to belong to a group of people who shared a culture. For me go was something involving people. Playing or using an AI did not involve another person, it was just solving puzzles. Because I had been to Japan and spoke Japanese I met pros frequently at Congresses and even became friends with some pros that way. I also came to see in person that pros aren't superhuman, which added a personal aspect to appreciating the game. It seems that go has declined as part of Japanese culture. I don't know how things are in China or Korea but I do know that pro go/weigi/baduk got a lot of fuel to develop from a desire to defeat the Japanese go players. Now that China and Korea are at the top, what does it mean for those cultures?

I just read an interesting interview to Yoshihara (Umezawa, to most of us... ) Yukari about the impact of Hikaru no Go, past, present and future og go.

In Japanese, but google translator makes a pretty good job (better than not long ago, I'd say).

https://jbpress.ismedia.jp/articles/-/75043

Is my browser being weird or did you mix hanya and Hangul?

Also, I haven't had much time with Go this year (and what little I had, I focused it on real life meetings; my first ever, as it happens), so I missed that bit about MBTI and Go. Do you have more info?

Thanks. Take care

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一碁一会

My understanding is that most traditional Japanese endeavors are suffering a decline. It’s visible in martial arts, where traditional schools have issues attracting a next generation, but also in newish ones, which seem to be veering towards spectacular performances. I also recently saw several interviews with swordsmiths and carpenters, and they all decried the lack of pupils, while they understood that being 5-10 years on an unpaid full time apprenticeship in an art with few exits was... fraught.

Take care

_________________
一碁一会

yes, hanyu and Hangeul for the win

For a few years now MBTI has been a trend in the KBA and more likely Korea in general. I've been into MBTI not too soon after started playing. I can assure you that most ENFP's are chaotic players and most ISTJ's are stable players. I find most promotion of the big 5 extraordinarily pretentious because it's only marginally different

The professionals is a favourite show of mine, but the post I made on reddit about it so I got pretty miffed when a few days later I realised some people on reddit thought I was referring to me with no social skills conducting it. I'm sorry bug that has to be one of the most idiotic things I've ever heard in my life, I guess my expectations of reddit should have been lower. Way to put me of reddit if they can make such profoundly nearly idiotic assumptions, I'm sorry about my tone. I couldn't even interview myself and that's the least of the issues

Or maybe they think I'm a profoundly stupid person, which to be fair these dayz would be quite a justified assumption, haha!