Shogi Players - Honinbo Sansa, Yoshiharu Habu, Larry Kaufman (Paperback)

Chapters: Honinbo Sansa, Yoshiharu Habu, Larry Kaufman. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 20. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Honinb Sansa (, 1559 June 13, 1623) was the assumed name of Kan Yosaburo ( ), one of the strongest Japanese Go players of the Edo period (1603-1867), and founder of the house of Honinb, first among the four great schools of Go in Japan. He was a Buddhist priest of the Nichiren sect, and his original dharma name was Nikkai (). Nikkai was born in Kyto and became a monk at age nine. The name "Honinb", (originally pronounced "Honninb"), comes from a sub-temple of the Jakkji temple complex in Kyto where Nikkai, the first "Honinb", resided. Among his students were the daimyo Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the three great "unifiers" of Feudal Japan. Nikkai considered the three generals to be "fifth-degree" players (, comparable to amateur 4 or 5 dan), but "diplomacy" was likely a factor in Nikkai's even-handed assessment of these imposing figures. It was the Shogun Nobunaga who, in 1578, recognized twenty-year-old Nikkai as the first Meijin of Go. In 1582, Nikkai, at the behest of Nobunaga, was involved in a notorious game at the Honnji Temple against his rival, another Nichiren priest, Kashio Rigen ( b. 1565). (Apparently, there is a theory that "Kashio" and "Rigen" were two different people. See the Japanese version of this article.) The game is traditionally held to have taken place on the eve of the treacherous Incident at Honnji, (in which Nobunaga was forced to commit seppuku), and is said to have ended in a "triple ko". Hence the notion of triple ko as bad omen. There is a game record, but typical for the period, it is incomplete. The triple ko may have occurred, somewhat implausibly, in unrecorded remaining plays, or in another game ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=371707