Introduction

The plethora of tournaments sponsored by newspapers is the most distinctive feature of Japanese go today, as it has been throughout the 20th century. Although there are cases of newspapers sponsoring events in China and Korea, the umbilical relationship that exists in Japan is unique.

This constant sponsorship has been a source of enormous strength for the entire go world, yet it has also been criticised recently as a source of weakness. The tendency of newspapers to report only their own events and to ignore all others totally did not matter much when the only significant go activity took place in Japan. But now international tournaments abound - and Japanese players generally are not doing too well in them. This self-imposed isolationism by the media is being seen as part of the problem. Changes are being urged.

Clearly the internet will also have repercussions on media activities everywhere. These are as yet unknown, but to help understand the changes to come, we will offer here a tour d'horizon of the landmarks in Japanese newspaper go over the last century and a bit.

Early History

It is well known that the support of newspapers came at a critical time in Japanese go history, for the ending of shogunal patronage at the end of the Edo period left even prestigious households such as the Honinbos close to destitution. But there was no cause and effect. It was simply the conjunction of two historical facts. On the one hand the conservative forces of the Tokugawa shoguns had been shown up by their inability to counter or cope with the intrusive new forces of western colonial powers. On the other, under the Meiji Emperor with his newly restored powers, many Japanese embraced western fashions with a passion that sometimes bordered on the hysterical.

One of the most significant western ideas imported was free-thinking newspapers. The passion for these was such that the many titles were soon competing fiercely against each other. New ideas were tried to boost circulation. One was a go column. There is, among some western go players, a vague belief that Japanese newspapers supported go at this time out of a sense of patriotic duty. There is no truth in this, and the players were not specially well rewarded. What is true, though, is that as the western faddism waned after the first heady decade, many people began to look again at traditional values and pursuits. Go did benefit from this feeling.

The Meiji Period

The Meiji period began in 1868. The first newspaper go column appeared on 1 April 1878. It was a game between Nakagawa Kamesaburo 6-dan and Takahashi Kinesaburo 5-dan - click here to download it in sgf format. Nakagawa was to be a leading light in Hoensha (he became its first vice-president in 1879) and was a son of Honinbo Jowa, and he won this game by the large margin of 6 points, with no komi. So clearly it was meant both to bask in and boost his prestige, but beyond that there seems to have been no special significance in the game. It took place in the house of the company's president. As was so often to be the case later, it certainly helped sponsorship if the boss was a go fan himself.

This game appeared in the Yubin Hochi Shinbun, a political broadsheet that spoke up on the freedom movements. It is now regarded as the first proper newspaper in Japan. It began in 1872 and ran until 1894 when it re-formed as the daily tabloid Hochi Shinbun, concentrating on sports and recreation. It remained a staunch supporter of go.

Another significant first followed soon: on 5 September 1878 the first-ever go book review appeared. It was for "Katsugo Shinpen" (Living Go, a New Edition) by Yokoo Kanekichi. This collection of outstanding tesuji problems is heavily featured in the modern Tesuji Dictionary by Fujisawa Hideyuki, and would well merit a reprint.

Yubin Hochi Shinbun continued publishing go twice a month but stopped in 1886 when it became a tabloid. However, it resumed with Next Move prize problems on 15 February 1890 when the anti-go chairman Yano Fumio retired. The first was from a game by Hoensha's Kobayashi Tetsujiro v. Hayashi Senji. Pros were allowed to compete. It was a big success.

In 1879, incidentally, Hoensha itself started publishing, in the form of the monthly Igo Shinpo. Also in 1879 Kiraku no Tomo (Leisure Friend), became the first magazine to feature go. It is common to speak nowadays of a leisure age, but clearly a similar feeling was abroad over a century before.

Yomiuri Shinbun

The Yomiuri Shinbun is a title well known to all go players. It began in 1874, and was far from the famous organ it was to become in the 1920s, but its involvement with go began in March 1885. Out of the blue it suddenly carried Game 4 of the 10-game match between Honinbo Shuho and Honinbo Shuei (click here to download). It proved very popular. At this time go games were published in one or two instalments, with simple comments - very simple at times, e.g. "Black 128 was good." This tradition carried on for a long time.

Having become the first to spot the interest in the drama of a ten-game match (the start of a tradition which helped turn it into the world's biggest newspaper), The Yomiuri in June 1885 published the first postal game in Japan, with Murase Shuho giving three stones (click here for the game). In 1899 it found a new gimmick, publishing the first telegraph game in Japan - the so-called "Tokyo-Osaka Go Telegraph Game" - over 100 days (click here to download).

Other Coverage Starts

Another paper that was to become a major supporter of go, the Kokumin Shinbun, began its coverage in November 1888. It was to merge later with the Miyako Shinbun in 1942 to become the Tokyo Shinbun, sponsors of the Tokyo Shinbun Cup.

Local papers got in on the act, too,of course. One very important one was the Kobe Shinbun which employed Ando Nyoi, author of the huge compendium of go history, Zain Danso, for a column from 1888.

Sponsorship

Nevertheless, at this stage the main patrons of go were not newspapers but individuals. The principal method of support was to pay top players to contest a ten-game match, though certain favoured players could rely on virtually continuous support - they were effectively salaried employees.

One of the most important of this type of sponsor was Takada Tamiko, wife of Takada Shinzo, head of the Takada Shokaisha trading company, who made his fortune from supplying the military in the Russo- and Sino-Japanese wars. She diverted much of this money into go, and is classed with Inukai Tsuyoshi and Toyama Mitsuru as one of its three great patrons. She paid a monthly stipend to Honinbo Shuei, Yasui San'ei and Nakagawa Kamesaburo, for instance, and also supported the Shisokai study group. Inukai and Toyama were politicians, and Inukai in particular was able to play a prominent part, becoming prime minister in 1931. He played a major part in bringing the young Go Seigen from China to Japan (because his political platform included friendly relations with China).

Post Sino-Japanese War

Go columns themselves were boosted by the favourable economic climate after the successful conclusion of the Sino-Japanese war in 1895. Indeed, the biggest go column of the Meiji era began on 7 August 1896 in the Jiji Shinpo. This paper ran from 1882 to 1936, when it became the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun and later the Mainichi Shinbun (sponsor of the Honinbo). Its founder was the famous educationalist Fukuzawa Yukichi. He claimed to have been inspired to run a go column by the Times of London's chess column. Given Fukuzawa's high moral tone about everything he did, we may safely conclude that he saw in go a morally didactic tool rather than a commercial gimmick. If so, this was a first of another kind.

The war with Russia, which ended in 1905, marked another watershed. Apart from the nationalist fervour it unleashed, it led to yet an economic boom as factories supported the war effort. In turn this created the conditions for a sharp growth in the number of media titles, many of which covered go. Although it was becoming possible to regard go almost as a barometer of Japan's economic health, the stage where newspapers sponsored tournaments had still to be reached, however.

The nationalist tabloid Nihon (published 1889-1914) began a go column in 1904 in which someone called Inoue Yasunobu discussed josekis. In 1905 the Yorozu Choho started publishing Honinbo-Hoensha games. In 1906 the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun began publishing historical games. In the same year the Tokyo Niroku Shinbun pubished readers' games and the Mainichi Denpo featured the professional Hirose Heijiro on fuseki.

In 1907 the Miyako Shinbun (another Tokyo paper, founded in 1888) started featuring the games of Karigane Jun'ichi's faction (that is, in rivalry to the Honinbo school). The following year the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun chose as its gimmick young players' games, and in 1909 the Chugai Shogyo Shinbun, a trade paper, entered the lists concentrating on new games (click here for a sample game). Also in that year the Yamato Shinbun chose young players' and women's games as its theme, the Osaka Asahi Shinbun, naturally enough, focused on games of the Kansai Study Group, and the Chuo Shinbun also picked on the games of young stars - presumably the fees were lower than for top players, but these found their niche in the Tokyo Mainichi Shinbun which started coverage of their games in 1910.

Moving Forward

The Yorozu Choho and the Jiji Shinpo, however, moved go coverage to a higher level than their rivals, to the extent that they could be regarded as sponsoring go rather than merely reporting it or carrying instructional articles. The Yorozu Choho, founded by Kuroiwa Ruiko, inventor of renju, made its name by publishing translations of famous works of western literature, and so its go audience was largely cultured readers of that stamp. It continued heavy support of go until the mid twenties. It eventually merged with Tokyo Maiyu Shinbun, and was perhaps too closely associated with Kuroiwa (also one of the main translators) to survive his death. But Yorozu Choho had one long-lasting effect in that it alternately featured games from the Honinbo school and Hoensha, thus helping to bring them together and to unify the go world (click here for a sample Yorozu game).

The Jiji Shinpo was able to continue its high-profile go coverage until the early Showa under the banner New Games of Go (Igo Shin-teai) but its peak came when it managed to secure the rights to the first games of the young Go Seigen even before he arrived in Japan - the so-called "contract games" (keiyaku gassen - click here for a sample game). They were never really able to cash in on these, however, and, as mentioned above, they were soon swallowed up in a merger with Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun, which had its own go tradition by then (click here for sample game).

Shoriki Matsutaro

For go, one of the most significant events of the age was the botched assassination attempt on the prince regent, Hirohito - the Toranomon Incident - for it brought on the scene Shoriki Matsutaro. Although not directly involved, as head of the Tokyo police force he was forced to resign, and take up a new career as president of Yomiuri Shinbun, then in a slump. He proved to have brilliant aptitude for newspaper publishing. Among the innovative changes he introduced were sensational news coverage, a full-page guide to radio programs, and support of sumo and go (this was the age of the greats, Futabayama and Go Seigen, though it could be argued he made them great). He also founded the perennial baseball champions, Yomiuri Giants.

It was not just in the introduction of new themes that he excelled. He also had a gift for attracting interest in the way they were covered. In the case of go he installed huge open-air boards in the city centre, and had games played (rather uncomfortably for the players) in the specially constructed all-glass room on top of the Yomiuri building. In short, he didn't just report news stories, he created them.

His first go gimmick was to sponsor the grudge match between Honinbo Shusai and Karigane Jun'ichi in 1926. It was wrapped up as a match between their respective schools, the Nihon Ki-in and Keiinsha, but everyone knew that the filling was the important part of the sandwich. Luckily for the Yomiuri, the two main protagonists responded with one of the most specatacular and famous games in go history (click here to download), given added piquancy by the fact that Karigane lost on time despite a time allowance of 16 hours (Karigane would have lost by six points anyway, it was reckoned).

Fukumenshi

One of Shoriki's innovations was to make sure no-one missed the significance of the games by employing journalists to write colour pieces. They were known by the pen-name Fukumenshi (Incognito), presumably meant ironically as the various holders of the title soon became well known. They even created their own dynasty - Fukumenshi I, Fukumenshi II and so on.

The first was Inoue Takuji. His new style of go column, observation rather than commentary, written in an elevated style with obscure allusions became popular at once. Ever alert, Shoriki and other papers capitalised on this by adding to the team of observers famous literary figures such as Kawabata Yasunari and Muramatsu Shofu. Kawabata's long association with go eventually led to the barely fictionalised account of a famous game between Honinbo Shusai and Kitani Minoru in his novel Meijin (translated by Edward Seidensticker as Master of Go). The novel began as a series of Mainichi newspaper reports on the game.

Go observers (rather than reporters) became big assets after Yomiuri's Fukumenshi (Inoue Takuji). Hochi had Seki Setsuzo (pen name Seki Seigetsu), Tokyo Nichinichi had Kojima Kazuo (pen name Ko Ichinen), Jiji had Ikoma Hosho (pen name Rokuroku O) and Mitani Suihei (pen names Sanrensei and Renmei. Under the latter he reported on the first Kitani-Go Seigen 10-game match). The fourth Fukumenshi Mihori Sho also became famous before the war, covered the Kamakura match between Kitani and Go, and later became vice-president of Hochi Shinbun.

The Late 20s

Stimulated by Shoriki's success with the 1926 match, the Tokyo Asahi Shinbun made a special contract to cover the Nihon Ki-in Oteai games in 1927. This can probably be regarded as the first sponsorship of the corpus of professional go players. Previously, the most usual sponsorship was an event known as a win-and-continue tournament (or by crusty old fogeys as a lose-and-retire tournament). Starting with random players, the winner stayed in the arena, taking on all-comers until he lost, and then his vanquisher took over. The main excitement came when players set up long winning streaks. It worked well for many years while there were few pros, for this meant that losers could soon expect to have another crack of the whip. With the merging of Hoensha and the Honinbos and the formation of the Nihon Ki-in in 1924, the number of available players sharply increased and there was pressure to spread the rewards around.

The Asahi-sponsored Oteai naturally proved very popular with the players, and in the absence of other tournaments, the Oteai acquired enormous prestige (the name was copied from sumo; there were many other little features at the time that accentuated the comparisons between go and sumo, both traditional pursuits enjoying a revival together).

Also stimulated by the success of the Yomiuri, the Tokyo Nichinichi Shinbun started a new stars' win-and-continue tournament (the Shinshin Uchikirisen) in early 1926, which was not innovative but which neverthless became a succes d'estime because the young Kitani Minoru, having made his name in the Yomiuri's Nihon Ki-in/Kiseisha match, put up a remarkable performance by winning 10 in a row.

The Hochi Shinbun, after the effective end of the Kiseisha, started the first-ever league (for 6 and 7-dans). It was a time when western words were in vogue in some quarters, and it was sexily named with the English word "league" - which has stuck.

The Jiji Shinpo's plans centred on Go Seigen and they later ran the first 10-game match between Go and Kitani, but they lacked Shoriki's flair for hype.

The Mainichi Shinbun attracted special interest with a series of even games, irrespective of grade, with komi.

Kitani's Steak

But the Yomiuri did not rest on their laurels after the Nihon Ki-in/Kiseisha match. Not everything they touched turned to gold, of course. They tried first a ten-game match between Nozawa Chikutomo and Suzuki Tamejiro from 1927-30. From 1930-32 they ran a win-and-continue tournament. In 1932 they ran a Japanese championship to celebrate their 20,000th issue - a significant event but not yet at the level of regular sponsorship of one title.

They struck gold, however, in 1934 when they began a win-and-continue tournament (labelled "Who's the strongest player in Japan?") which had several novel features: it was restricted to high-dan players; each contest was a best-of-three; and, most important, the prize money (for longest winning streak) was the massive sum of 3,000 yen!

At that time a bowl of noodles cost 8 sen (100 sen = 1 yen), cigarettes cost 10 sen, university entry fees were 50 yen, and you could buy a house for 1,000 yen.

Lots were drawn and first up were Kitani Minoru 6-dan and Iwamoto Kaoru 6-dan. Kitani lost the first game but won the match 2-1.

The series continued thus:

• Kitani beat Kato Shin 7-dan 2-0
• Kitani beat Segoe Kensaku 7-dan 2-0
• Kiatni beat Hashimoto Utaro 5-dan 2-0
• Kitani beat Go Seigen 6-dan 2-0
• Kitani beat Miyasaka Shinji 6-dan 2-1
• Kitani beat Onoda Chiyotaro 6-dan 2-1
• Kitani beat Kubomatsu Katsukiyo 6-dan 2-0
• Kitani beat Hasegawa Akira 6-dan 2.5-1.5
• Kitani beat Maeda Nobuaki 6-dan 2-0.

The series ended through lack of more opponents (click here for sample game). Since Kitani had been clocking up equally impressive results in other games, he had thus proven himself as superior to all other players, including Go Seigen, as Go was to prove later. Yet he has never been given full credit for this achievement, possibly because when Go came to prominence later Shin-fuseki had already galvanised the amateur go public, and it was also possible for the media to play the race card - China versus Japan. Readers of the Yomiuri column at the time of the Kamakura games, for instance, in the early stages of the war, were inclined to bring politics into it, and there is no doubt that the match attracted a level of melodramatic interest that has helped Go's exploits remain in the public eye more than Kitani's.

Nevertheless, Yomiuri's extravagant prize of 3,000 yen did have one remarkable long-term effect. Kitani used it to buy his large house in Hiratsuka, and so was able to take in lots of students, most of whom have become among the most famous players of the modern age.

1935 onwards

The leapfrogging among the various papers, and of course the efforts of the players themselves in Shin-Fuseki, meant that the period around 1935 saw newspaper go reach new levels of public interest. Asahi possibly still had the edge with their Oteai games, but Mainichi came back strongly with the preparations for the first Honinbo tournament, via Shusai's retirement game, and the Yomiuri drove a great wedge into Asahi's preeminence with its series of ten-game matches. These three big papers devoted a quarter of a page to their go columns, with enough room for the addition of reference diagrams for the first time. In newspapers, go was then up with sumo and baseball.

This was all knocked sideways by the war and paper shortages. Go players, as prominent people, were sent overseas to play teaching games with soldiers, and so space was made available for go in newspapers. But as the war progressed, go gradually disappeared. The Yomiuri was a notable bastion of retained go throughout.

Post Second World War

Loss of the war, of course, was an even greater impediment. There was an inevitable hiatus after the war, and newspaper go activity cannot really be said to have begun again in earnest until about 1955. Yet, remarkably, go columns resumed first with the Yomiuri-Hochi (temporarily merged during the war) in December 1945, followed in August of the next year by Mainichi.

An often overlooked consequence of the war was the massive loss of games records and newspapers during the fire-bombing of Tokyo. Some games of this period have only recently come to light. These include some in the private papers of Kitani Minoru.

He was the top player at the time, at 8-dan. Go Seigen had left the game for religious pursuits in early 1946. Of the 7-dans, the youngest was 26-year-old Fujisawa Kuranosuke (Hosai), and a three-game match between him and Kitani sponsored by the Shin Yugata newspaper was a beacon for the new post-war age of go. The games hoarded by Kitani included Game 3 of this match. From the notes he added in his own hand, we now know that it was played on 27th, 28th and 29th April 1946 at the house of a Mr Saiga.

Shin Yugata

The editorial staff of the now defunct journal Kido researched this event and found a microfilm of the Shin Yugata in the National Library in Tokyo. There are considerable gaps, including the first edition, but they were able to piece together a reasonable outline from the game reports and observer's comments.

The Shin Yugata was a single-sheet tabloid newspaper printed back and front and was started by Nagai Tatsuo, Kobayashi Hideo, Hayashi Fusao and others on 21 January 1946. The day before the commentary on Game 1 was begun, in the issue for 20th February, they loudly trumpeted the fact that the three-game match announced in their launch issue was about to be published. The announcement made it plain how proud a small newspaper like Shin Yugata was to publish something relating to the acme of the go world.

Iwamoto Kaoru 9-dan has written in his autobiography "Igo o Sekai ni" (Go to the World) that,

"The Yamato Shinbun games began on 20th [December]. The news was brought to me by a supporter, someone called Iwata. The game fee was 500 yen per game and the first to be played, so far as I can recall, was Kitani against Fujisawa Kuranosuke."

One interesting facet of this match is the power of the sponsor to change tradition. In Game 1, which he won, Kitani was White, giving the handicap of Black in two games out of three. In Game 2 Fujisawa should have been White, because by this time the Edo practice of making the order of games BBW had been replaced by BWB. It seems that it was at the sponsor's urging that Fujisawa again took Black instead, to make it more likely they would go into a third game. Fujisawa won as expected, and the third game was played (click here to download).

Conclusion

The post-war period of newspaper go in Japan has been a period of constant growth, and most newspapers have retained their involvement throughout that period. But since the various tournaments are described in detail elsewhere on this site, we will leave our survey there.