The Japanese sponsors are naughty again to hold another 'World Go Championship', with very limited places and strongly biased for their own players, who may I say, are much weaker than the Korean and Chinese opponents.
I think this is the second time we have had this sort of comment from the same person, and it is very "naughty". Do the first three words "the Japanese sponsors" as opposed to "the sponsors" tell us something? Is that against the Terms and Conditions?
We need to nail this, so a detailed answer seems called for.
First, Japanese does not use articles. There is no formal difference between "a championship" and "the championship", or for that matter between "championships" and "the championships". The word for world (世界) is not inherently deictic in Japanese and as an adjective is routinely used to mean "international". Reference to the best Japanese-English dictionary, Kenkyusha, for example, will present you with two such meanings: "international; world" - in that order. Adverbially 世界的に means "internationally" (not "worldly" - so we can see there, too, that the overlap with English is far from uniform). 世界博覧会 is
any "international exposition" or "world's fair". A 世界の問題 is
an international issue, not
the only problem in the world. It is true in this case that the word "world" has been borrowed from English as ワールド but that's no more than a common design tic. And of course the Japanese (like the Russians, Chinese and others) have major problems with English articles.
As has been expressly stated in at least almost all small-scale "world" (i.e. international) championships before when they have been set up, a significant part of the sponsor's aims has been to promote domestic go. Since the aim is to provide domestic players opportunities to play against the best foreign competition it is only natural to have more domestic players in the line-up. So natural in fact that the following self-styled "world" (i.e. international) tournaments for women (who need such extra support because they tend not to get invitations to the open events) have all had more domestic players than each foreign country invited:
Cuibao Cup: 15 Chinese + 1 from Singapore
Hungchang Cup: 10 Chinese out of 24
Yuanyang Cup: 6 Chinese out of 16 but the two representatives from USA and Europe were also Chinese (and no invitation for Rui Naiwei, BTW)
Dail Cup: 10 out of 24
Haojue Cup: 6 Chinese out of 16
Bohae Cup: 6 out of 16
It is not possible to make a similar listing for Korean events because they have traditionally preferred international team events, but the principle is not unknown there. The Tong Yang Securities Cup began with a "world" name but just a token foreign presence. Although only men were involved, this too was at a time when the Koreans were making strenuous efforts to catch up with the rest of the go world.
The Senko Cup appears to have a bigger preponderance of domestic players, but two points can be made. One is simple arithmetic. If you have only eight players and four foreign nations to satisfy equally, you can only go with 4 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1. Similar arithmetic explains the 6/16 and 10/24 patterns. Limiting the field to 8 is not sinister. Senko Group Holdings have had a policy of building up slowly. They began sponsoring a go festival in Higashiomi (ninja country!) a dozen years ago, and a highlight has always been the contingent of female pros invited for exhibition games, etc. A couple of years ago it expanded to a domestic tournament for female pros. I have mentioned elsewhere the current popularity of female go in Japan, and an ambitious sponsor like Senko can hardly be blamed for riding the wave. Now they have stepped up onto the world stage. Decent support, not niggling criticism, might encourage them to expand further in future.
The second point is that one of the domestic players, Xie Yimin, is actually from Taiwan and another, Nyu Eiko, has a Chinese connection (she is the niece of Michael Redmond's Chinese wife). So it may be domestic but it's hardly nationalistic.
We can all probably agree that the foreign players are stronger here (that, after all, is the point of the competition) and the gap between 1st prize and the rest is unusually large. So the sponsor is implicitly accepting that the bulk of its funds will leave the country. That doesn't seem very nationalistic, either.
So, on various counts we can conclude that the Senko sponsors are not being any more nationalistic or "naughty" than previous sponsors in other countries. Indeed, in my opinion, their actions, like those of previous sponsors, are nothing but prudent and praiseworthy.
That is not to deny that there have been and still are nationalistic problems in go, especially among fans. Korea-Japan relations have at times been tempestuous, Korean fans have been very cruel to a Chinese female pro, and the behaviour of fans when the TV Asia Championship was last in Tokyo truly was heinous. But those passions of fandom ought not to be stoked further by mistranslating a simple word and second-guessing a sponsor's stated motives.
(scared) , as I think it may help to avert the "mickey mouse apocalypse"). Do the majority of commentaries go this way or is it a more recent practice?