Kikuchi Yasuro was one of the greatest amateurs of all time, and as such deserves to mentioned in this Professionals sub-group. He died recently at the age of 92 - simply of old age.
He won over 20 amateur titles, and was remarkable enough to be honoured with a published collection of his best games - he had played over 300 games with professionals. He won the 14th World Amateur Championship. One of his foibles was the habit of playing his first move as Black in the lower right corner.
His main career was in a steelworks, but he was also, in retirement, a go writer and teacher of several successful professionals in his school, the Ryokusei Academy. Perhaps the most successful pupil was Yamashita Keigo. Yamashita was with him at the end, and said that although Kikuchi could at that stage no longer speak, he responded energetically to the news that the Japanese team (including Yamashita) had just won the 3rd CJK Nie Weiping Go Masters team tournament (Yamashita neat Yi Ch'ang-ho).
By way of tribute to Kikuchi, I give below an outdated (but still copyrighted) account of the Ryokusei Academy from the GoGoD files:
THE RYOKUSEI ACADEMY ONE OF THE MOST significant forces in professional go in Japan at present [2000] is a frail-looking but still active amateur. He is Kikuchi Yasuro.
Born in 1929 in Tokyo, Kikuchi has won over 20 amateur titles, and so qualifies many times over for the new status of 8-dan amateur. He probably could have been a pro himself, but chose instead to stay with a small steelworks during his working life. Since retirement from that job, however, he has kept himself in full-time employment by running the Ryokusei Academy in Shibuya Ward in Tokyo. He founded the Academy in 1975, but it derives from an earlier Ryokuseikai that he formed in 1952. This was a study group in his own home and it ran for five years before blending with the Kanrokukai into the Amateur Study Group. Even then it was noted for the number of strong players it produced.
Ryokusei has arguably been the most effective school for producing professionals apart from the schools of Kitani Minoru and Kubouchi Shuchi, but what is not in doubt is that it is the one enjoying greatest success now.
The Academy began with ten students, mostly university students. In the second year, promising schoolchildren of any age were allowed in. In its fourth year (1982) it had its first major success when Muramatsu Ryuichi, now 7-dan, became a pro from its ranks. There was also Maeda Ryo, now 6-dan, though he later joined the school of Ohira Shuzo 9-dan.
Graduate success In 1988, Yamashita Keigo, who as we write this is about to challenge for his first title in the 25th Gosei, was another graduate, having joined when in primary school (he went on to become Primary School Meijin too). Yamashita went to Tokyo all the way from Asahikawa City in Hokkaido, so as you can see the Ryokusei Academy had become a boarding school, having had to expand its premises to a whole house in Nakano Ward in 1992.
The successes of graduates have multiplied recently. For example, Aoki Shinichi won the Shunei and Miyazaki Shimako and Osawa Narumi both won the Women's Kakusei, and Yamashita also has several minor titles under his belt. Akiyama Jiro 7-dan and Mizokami Tomochika 6-dan are other senior graduates.
But there are other features which distinguish the Ryokusei Academy apart from such tangible successes. One of the most important in the longer term, probably, has been the way it has forged links with similar academies in China and Korea. An early link-up was with China's youth squad in Beijing, exchanges continuing for three years.
The Academy was then forced by its own success to move yet again, or rather to branch out, this time to Setagaya Ward in 1996.
Overseas links At the time of writing, these overseas link-ups were still in full swing. May 2000 saw the second match between the Ryokusei Academy and the Heo Academy in Seoul. The Heo Academy is Korea's most famous training school for go pros and is run by Heo Chang-heui. Unlike Kikuchi, Heo is still an active pro, born in 1954 and making 8-dan in 1996. His school is purely for children and is run in a rather more regimented way than is usual in Japanese go schools, with a tailored programme of events reinforced by having classrooms devoted to those activities. But it is successful and includes Kim Myeong-wan 4-dan, An Yeong-kil 3-dan and Ch'oe Ch'oel-han 2-dan among its alumni - all teenagers cutting a swathe in domestic events.
For a game from that event, Akiyama Jiro 7-dan versus the 18-year-old Hong Chang-sik 3-dan, see game 2000-05-25b.
Also at the time of writing, the Academy had 14 pros, 13 inseis and 80 amateurs on its rolls. Of all the new pros enrolled in the Nihon Ki-in in the last five years, the Academy has been the top supplier with five, ahead of Cho Chikun's school (four) and Kobayashi Koichi's (three).
It is hard to say what makes one school better than another, but Kikuchi's Academy is not, on the face of it, especially innovative. The players all play each other in a league, they study both ancient and modern games, and Kikuchi himself stresses not just the refinement of on-the-board skills but also decorum and stamina.
These are core disciplines that have characterised his own go-playing career. His achievements have been enough to warrant a book of his own games published by the very distinguished publishing house Seibundo.
See, for example, one of Kikuchi's games from a ten-game match he won against top pro Kajiwara Takeo: 1962-00-00a. The GoGoD database has many other games by Kikuchi.
A quick resume of Kikuchi's career may be useful here. He learnt go at three, was a regular player at an all-day Sunday club at age 7 and by the time he entered Junior School (1942) he was amateur 2-dan. Because of the war he moved out to Yokohama in 1943 and there was able to study with Koizumi Shigero 5-dan, Morikawa Masao 1-dan and Fujisawa Kuranosuke 7-dan. By the time he went to university to read economics (1947) he was amateur 5-dan. He entered the first amateur championship after the war and reached the semi-finals, but more importantly was noticed by the legendary Yasunaga Hajime, author of Shin Fuseki. He began his working life in 1953 but went on to win the Amateur Honinbo 10 times.
[He of course has had further successes after 2000]
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