Kamakura Jubango - Background

Background

Nine months before the match started, Kitani had defeated Honinbo Shusai, the Meijin, in Shusai's retirement game. The Honinbo title was to be open to competition, and both Kitani and Go took part in that tournament. Each failed to get through to the final match, which was contested by Sekiyama Riichi and Kato Shin, with Sekiyama becoming the first Honinbo under the titleholder system in 1941. The preliminaries of this first Honinbo tournament were under way during the Kamakura match. With wartime conditions, the pace of all competitions slowed considerably. All these players also took part in the Oteai competition. The first 9 dan to emerge from the Oteai was Fujisawa Kuranosuke, some years later (at this time 6 dan). At the time, it was hard to receive promotion even to 8 dan. The pool of top players was rather small; Karigane Junichi was 8 dan but had stayed outside the system that had established itself around Shusai and the Nihon Ki-in.

The result of the match was the first step in the process by which Go Seigen would establish ascendancy over his rivals (except Sekiyama, who withdrew from competition because of bad health). He was promoted to 8 dan in spring 1942. Having taken on Kitani, against whom he had an unfinished jubango stopped at 3-3 in 1933 when Kitani was promoted, Go took on both Karigane and Fujisawa (whom he played in the end in three long matches), and then the new Honinbos Hashimoto Utaro and Iwamoto Kaoru. Go Seigen played again in the Honinbo tournament, but not after 1945. In later years various challenges allowed him to face the Honinbo of the time.