Hon'inbō Shūsai

He then broke with the game for a time, tried to go into business on his own account, and ended up in a Buddhist retreat in Chiba Prefecture.

[1] He was then helped by Kim Ok-gyun, a Korean then resident in Japan, who used his contacts to secure Tamura an introduction to Hon'inbō Shūei.

He played Ishii Senji, a top player at Hoensha, in two jubango, one in 1895 on sen, and the other in 1897 on sen-ai-sen. A fourth such match in 1899 was left incomplete.

The manner of his ascension was to cause a lasting conflict between Tamura, who took the name Shūsai, and Karigane, also of the Honinbo house, who had been backed by Shuei's widow.

In Shūsai's case, as was for Shūei previously, there was no official government involvement, and his title was given by the acclaim of fellow players.

Shusai pushed the strategy of the Meiji period – as famously outlined by Hon'inbō Shūho's book Hoen Shinpo – to further efficiency.

This was done by playing farther and sometimes higher extensions, with the intention of providing better global protection to weak points.

The 1924 foundation of the Nihon Ki-in was the most significant moment in the organisational history of Japanese go in the twentieth century.

The process was started in 1923 with the foundation of the Hiseikai group by Karigane, Tamejiro Suzuki, Dohei Takabe, and Segoe Kensaku.

Under the guidance of Baron Kishichiro Okura, the Nihon Ki-in was founded in May 1924 to merge existing organizations into a single entity.

This was just the initial game of a subsequent win-and-continue match, in which three Kiseisha players (Karigane, Takabe and Onoda Chiyotaro) rotated against Nihon Ki-in young stars.

Shūsai shamelessly abused this privilege by calling adjournments some 13 times, without exception, all at his turn to move, thus prolonging the match to a period of three months (16 October 1933 – 19 January 1934).

The game was later immortalized by Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari in the novel Meijin (published in English as The Master of Go).

Even though a transitional figure, Shūsai possessed enormous prestige due to his positions of Meijin and Hon'inbō, but he often abused his privileges as the senior player.

As a guest, Shūsai had refused to abide by Chinese playing rules, embarrassing his hosts in the process.

Moreover, Shūsai would not apparently risk losing to young Chinese players and left many games unfinished, supposedly to be concluded another day, a promise he never fulfilled.

[4] Go Seigen accused Shūsai of selling his prestigious Hon'inbō title for a large sum to build himself a magnificent house while failing to give any of the money back to the go community.