Life In 19x19

pajaro wrote:BTW, after today's game, if I am not wrong, Fujisawa will keep her seat next year too.

Only the semi-finalists keep their spot for next year. So Rina has to win one more game.

John Fairbairn wrote:
I don't think this is correct. It is correct that Fujisawa was the first but that was in the Tengen in 2019. She beat Takahashi Masumi.

You are right. I made some research but I missed this. Being the same player, and with some bad translation, I made this mistake.

But the main point stands: it is not common for women to reach the final stages of tournaments, although it is happening more often. Fujisawa and Ueno at the same time is a turning point.

gazzawhite wrote:

pajaro wrote:BTW, after today's game, if I am not wrong, Fujisawa will keep her seat next year too.

Only the semi-finalists keep their spot for next year. So Rina has to win one more game.

In the #59 Judan, Iyama Yuta skipped the first round, won in the second round and lost in quarterfinals. Same as Fujisawa, so far. He kept his place. Maybe because he has a big score, maybe because he lost to the challenger (and winner). But Onishi Ryuhei (who is playing this year again in the main tournament) lost like Iyama, and had to play another prelim game.

So... some right facts mixed with wrong research, and that's 2 mistakes in the same post.

pajaro wrote:
In the #59 Judan, Iyama Yuta skipped the first round, won in the second round and lost in quarterfinals. Same as Fujisawa, so far. He kept his place. Maybe because he has a big score, maybe because he lost to the challenger (and winner). But Onishi Ryuhei (who is playing this year again in the main tournament) lost like Iyama, and had to play another prelim game.

So... some right facts mixed with wrong research, and that's 2 mistakes in the same post.

Iyama had to play a prelim game as well. He beat Ohashi Horifumi. The details are here (game 8 in the Final Qualifying section). 16 spots are through prelims, so only 4 players get seeded.

Has anyone got the Amazon army photobook? It's got silly posed photos and cosplay. Like something you would find for a fundraiser or charity. I like this machine translation of the description "It is full of charms such as smiling faces of 10 people and cosplay photos that make you nervous." Like, ドキドキする?



I wonder who would be in the Men's version? Coming soon I hope.

Fujisawa's Judan win against Son Makoto was a first in a way - it was the first time a woman has reached the last eight of major event. But what I hadn't appreciated till reading about it today is that she did it against a player who is in sparkling form: Son Makoto is on a score of 22-8 (and he's in the Kisei B League). However, he is only prosecco compared to Rina's champagne. She is on 34-11, which includes an 11-game winning streak.

But what I found most astounding was that of the 20 players who started the final section of the Judan, only five were 9-dans (and one of those, Iyama, has already been knocked out). Furthermore, only one of them is in Rina's half of the draw. That's Shibano, and he's young enough to be susceptible to the fluttering the eyelids tesuji!

@CDavis7M

Do you have the name of that photobook in text? I'd love to search for it but don't know how to replicate the kanji in the picture! Thank you!

Never mind, found it! https://item.rakuten.co.jp/nihonkiin/v0001/

MoxElliot wrote:Never mind, found it! https://item.rakuten.co.jp/nihonkiin/v0001/

Yeah, that's the same page I found it on. I have not ordered from Rakuten. I believe they do overseas shipping but I could not find a definite price. Please share if you make an order from there.

You can also order from Rakuten using a courier service, like "Buyee" (https://buyee.jp/) which I have used before. Unfortunately, the shipping from Buyee is also expensive but I have an expectation of the price already: ¥1,100 in courier fees per order and ¥3,322 for the cheapest shipping for (2 hardback books in my case). Of course, there is still the normal shipping from the merchant to the courier. But that is relatively cheap.

CDavis7M wrote:I wonder who would be in the Men's version? Coming soon I hope.

I don't think it will be coming any time soon.

Men are serious players. I don't think nobody would even suggest the idea.

pajaro wrote:

CDavis7M wrote:I wonder who would be in the Men's version? Coming soon I hope.

I don't think it will be coming any time soon.
Men are serious players. I don't think nobody would even suggest the idea.

Well, I'm looking forward to it anyway.

When I saw that mockup of a men's magazine it occurred to me that I had no idea how many female professional players there are in Japan. First I thought if there are few enough that you could fit everyone in one pamphlet but that is not the case, possibly you could fit all the the relatively young ones but I didn't bother to check this. There 88 female professionals listed as active in Japan on this site, if you include the inactive list it is 102. The inactive list is players with too few games to be included in the ranking, but also seems to include new pros that presumably will enter the rankings soon.

I will grant that there are probably hundreds more professionals in Japan that are retired or on a long hiatus and would not be listed in such a rating list.

So basically with 88 active female players and a total of 447 active players then 20% (or 19.68680% if you like) of Japanese professional Go players are female.

It is kind of weird to only have such picture magazines published around this subject if you ask me Surely it is normal to see female professionals in Japan, Japanese Go magazines and other media and so on. Then again it seems like there is much much more interest in digging up such content about female professional and I am not sure that is an indication that there are not such picture pamphlets for the most famous professionals in Japan.

It is a bit surprising if 1-in-5 of Japanese professionals is a woman, at least must be for people like me who mostly just glance over the brackets in the final tournaments.

The GoGoD Onomasticon has entries for 500 females out of about 4,500 total entries. This covers all eras and all the main go-playing countries, but even so a proportion of 10%+ will probably surprise many.

Yet China can claim the first game by a woman as far back as around 1100, if we trust the attribution to the Lady of Black-Horse Mountain, but probably also the first female rules maven (uggghh!). At least we have a contrived whole-board seki in a Ming manual published in 1634 which attributes it to a "female immortal". Before either of these, we even had the girl go player in Tang times who inspired the Mulan legend. But, historically, China's record on accommodating female players has been patchy.

Japan can claim the first pro, Yokozeki Iho, in the late 18th century. But women there benefited more widely from the culture of treating go as a craft and a family craft at that. So if you were a male professional running a go school and had only a daughter, you would teach her go and pass the school on her to run. This applies even today. I've been to several go clubs in Japan run by women, though I have to add that the clientele was always 100% male. This was in part because female players organised their own clubs and still do. There is a rather big and long-running tournament scene for matches between these clubs, and the Nihon Ki-in reports on them. Nowadays there is also the more fashionable chain of Dream Salons where women can enjoy go away from the sort of grubby men who produce pin-up calendars.

One common reason older women play go in Japan nowadays is to avoid losing their marbles. There is a lovely manga from about 20 years ago called Hibi Goseki which is about a young girl, Sakura-chan, who runs a go club. This mythical club does have female members, and one of the first scenes in the manga is about greeting a new female member who says she took up go precisely to avoid going doolally in her old age.

There have been pro female tournaments going back over 100 years, and Nihon Ki-in tournaments specifically for women go back to the Women's Honinbo in 1952. But they have been allowed into men's tournament for much longer. In the 1930s Suzuki Hideko was playing in the top section of the Oteai, and before that Kita Fumiko was a big noise in the Hoensha (she had a high plus score against the men).

So, given all that background, and much more (e.g. Hikaru's creator is female; the Polgar experiment was nothing new in Japan, etc etc), it really shouldn't be a surprise if we take it that female go has a strong presence in Japanese go.

And it seems to be getting stronger. That's nice.

Go World seems to do a great job covering the women. Go seems like an activity that should have fairly equal representation, so it's good to improve the atmosphere around the game for everyone.

One part of Go that is underrepresented is the guys having any fun in their photoshoots. Only Shibano seems to like that sort of thing.


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Anyone notice that actor from the shochu advertisements from the back of Go World?

John Fairbairn wrote:And it seems to be getting stronger. That's nice.

Judging from these rankings it appears Fujisawa Rina is right up there with the usual suspects from the kisei/meijin/honinbo final tournaments. Though I understand that these ratings are based on Glicko and probably follow the latest performance much more closely than elo/gor ratings. But it does strongly indicate that she could make it through to there like she did in the Judan tournament.

kvasir wrote:Judging from these rankings

I don't know what rankings you are talking about. Perhaps goratings.org? Most official games are taken into account here.

Anyway, it is clear that Fujisawa is a top player amongst women, and also overall. She is young and improving every year. She holds most female titles, but hopefully, she will be challenged soon by more and more players. Recently, Hoshiai Shiho lost 3-0 in the Honinbo. The winner was clear, right, but it was a new name aiming to the top.

There are many new female pro players. Sumire may be the most famous, but she is not the only one. From time to time, I see new names. I'd like to know them better, at least by name. In the youtube broadcastings, sometimes they say the name of the record keepers (usually, 2 young pros), but not always. Add face masks and my (null) ability to remember faces...

The Amazon army sure is increasing their troops.