The long-established Japanese chess academy organizes Go activities in three bases: Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka, which was formed through a long process of evolution. The Chubu Headquarters in Nagoya, formerly known as the Tokai Headquarters, was renamed to its current name in the 1950s, and it was from that time that Chubu players united to have their own regional tournament, namely the championship battle that only ten players have won since its inception in 1953.
The final of the 62nd Crown Battle takes place between Tachibana Ita (right) and Yu Otake (left), with two people, who are no more than 47 years old and have just arrived in three-quarters of the tournament, taking photos in front of the burning fireplace of the final hotel.
The Crown Battle was co-sponsored by the Chunichi Shimbun (a newspaper for the central region of Japan) and the Chubu Headquarters of the Japan Chess Academy, and the prize money for the championship was 1.7 million yen (about 96,000 yuan). The first fifteen tournaments (1953-1974) were held once and a half a year, so the total number of sessions by 2021 was only 62, but this was already one of the few in the Japanese Go world, and only a few competitions such as the Battle of Benyinfang, the Battle of the Throne, and the First Battle of the Kansai Chess Academy were longer than it, and it was even more difficult to find in China and South Korea, which started late in professional Go.
Scene of Takashi Ita receiving the trophy of the Championship Battle.
The older generation of Chuko players have left brilliant records in the championship battle, the eldest of the famous "Sakai Four Brothers" Sakai Tsunomi (1912-1997) won the 1st and 3rd championships in 1953 and 1957, and Shimamura Toshihiro (1912-1991), who is famous for his "Ninja Chess", won five consecutive championships from 1960 to 1965, and twice overthrew the thirty-two-year-old younger Hagen Taisho from 1974 to 1975, setting a record for the highest age of the sixty-three-year-old champion.
Group photo of central chess players in the 1960s, third from the left in the second row is Toshihiro Shimamura, and third from right is Tonomi Sakai. The "Four Sakai Brothers" are each good at winning, and the eldest brother Sakai Tongwen Jiudan is outstanding and carries the banner of central Go. The second brother, Yasuo Sakai (fourth row, fourth from left), was a social talent who contacted the financial and financial circles to support the development of Chubu and hosted the cultural film "Go" at the 1970 Osaka World Exposition. The elder Sakai Toshio 7th Dan (first row right) and the fourth brother Sakai Yoshiyoshi Yoshinori (fourth from the right in the fourth row) are generalists in the chess industry, and each contributed to the construction of the Central Go Hall and the establishment of the Toyota Cup World Go Throne Battle. The four brothers held leadership positions at chubu headquarters for nearly half a century, and on June 27, 2021, the youngest, Yoshiyoshi Sakai, passed away at the age of eighty-nine, symbolizing the end of an era.
Tatsuaki Iwata, who lost to Chen Zude in the 1965 China-Japan Exchange Tournament and forged the chinese Go milestone, won the championship nine times in five years Chinese New Year's Eve from 1956 to 1980, and the championship battle accompanied him throughout his life. When Tatsuaki Iwata retired in 2011 at the age of eighty-five, the last game of his career was won in the championship battle.
After retiring from the army, Tatsuaki Iwata is still tireless in popularizing Go, and the picture shows mentoring enthusiasts at the age of ninety-one in 2017.
In 1972, at the age of twenty-eight, Yasumasa Haone successfully challenged Tatsuaki Iwata. In 1977, Iwata made another background board, and lost to Hiroshi Yamashiro, who was only nineteen years old at the time, opening a new era of crown warfare. Hagen Taisho and Yamashiro Hiroshi are known as the "big and small diamonds" in the central region, and in the 1980s, they were widely known to the Chinese chess community through the Sino-Japanese Go Tournament, Ande Taisho broke the myth of Nie Weiping's iron gate undefeated, Yamashiro Hiroshi set off consecutive victories many times, and their main battlefield as chess players was the crown battle.
In 1988, the 4th Sino-Japanese Tournament made Taisei Hane famous.
From 1972 to 1992, Hagen Taisho won the championship four times, and Yamashiro Hiroshi was even more amazing, reaching the top fifteen times in four years Chinese New Year's Eve from 1977 to 2010, defeating the seniors Tatsuaki Iwata (3 times), Yasusho Hagen (5 times), Masamitsu Tsuchida in the final, his contemporaries Naoto Yanzaka and Masaki Koji, and hideki Matsuoka and Naoki Hagen (3 times) in the final, which is a record that is quite rare. However, Yamashiro's chess luck may be exhausted in the crown battle, as the "six super first-class era" closest to the ceiling of the promising man, even once the seven title battles have not been won, many times rated as the Japanese Go N big unsolved mystery.
Yamashiro has played seven finals with Yasuomasa Hagen, who is fourteen years older, and nine finals with Naoki Hane, who is eighteen years younger, and can be said to be the player with whom the kudan father and son have the deepest relationship.
It is worth mentioning that in 1970 and 1987, Tsuchida Masamitsu Kudan, who won the right to challenge the crown battle twice, announced his retirement as early as 2005, but sixteen years after retiring from the professional arena, Doda Kudan was elected as a non-partisan and political newcomer to the Mayoral Election of Magifu City (officially ran on November 30, 2021, just on the day of the 62nd Crown Battle final in Gifu Prefecture), calling for peace, calling for attention to education and environmental protection, and attacking the Japanese government's negative attitude towards preventing and controlling the new crown pneumonia infection. Masamitsu Tsuchida is a chess player who came out of the Kitani Dojo, and there are nine disciples such as Masaki Kojima and Hideki Matsuoka, who stepped into politics at the age of seventy-seven and took a new path in life.
The above-mentioned five-man monopoly champion of Sakai, Shimamura, Iwata, Hane, and Yamagi has been the champion for thirty-five years, and in 1988, the twenty-four-year-old Masaki Kojima successfully challenged Yamashiro Hiroshi and then dominated for four consecutive years, and in 1997, the twenty-eight-year-old Nakano Hiroshi also challenged Yamashiro again and won the second consecutive championship, and then entered the years when Hane Taisho's son, Naoki Hane, single-handedly dominated the central chess world. Nakano and Kojima, the two stalwarts of Jiudan, have been fighting until the age of knowing the destiny of heaven in the championship battle, and in 2018 and 2019, they jumped out of the siege to get the crown challenge, but they did not have the energy to conquer the young people's fortress.
After winning the crown for the first time in 1999 at the age of twenty-three, Naoki Hagen won the crown twelve times until 2015. In the past two decades, the only person who can share the crown with Hagen is the old and strong Yamashiro Hiroshi, and his brother-in-law Hideki Matsuoka in 2006. Matsuoka's sister Kikako is also a junior in her career, married Naoki Hagen, and gave birth to her daughter Hane Saina in 2019.
Hagen Taisho, Naoki Hane, and Hane Sai Natsu's grandchildren have been three generations of professionals to continue the chess industry.
In the 63rd Championship Qualifiers that began in 2021, Hane's grandchildren entered the final round of the qualifiers together, grandpa Hane Taimasa lost to Queen Jingyi of Wang Licheng, granddaughter Hane Caixia lost to the powerful new Rokuura Yuta, and father Naoki Hane won the old rival Yamashiro Hiroshi to enter the tournament.
In 2010, the fifty-two-year-old Yamashiro won the crown for the last time, and in the heyday of Hane's three consecutive championships and then five consecutive championships, he stepped in, after which the elderly chess players collectively withdrew. Born in 1994 in 2016, Itachi Tokushi was the sole champion of the crown, and in six years, he repelled Naoki Hane, Yuta Rokuura, Kanya Nakano, Masaki Koji, and Yu Otake (2 times), setting the first six consecutive championships in the 68-year history of the Crown War. Rokuura was born in 1999 and Ohtake was born in 2001, and the game was slow-paced, retaining a lot of twentieth-century Go colors (for example, it was still a 4-hour extra-long time per side, and the 12-player tournament was only played once a month for newspaper publication, and the last champion won a set to defend the title) also gradually appeared younger.
The 62nd Championship Final on November 30, 2021 was a one-sided victory for Itachi, surpassing the five-game winning streak of Toshihiro Shimamura and Naoki Hanede, and since winning one game a year can ensure the championship, it is not yet possible to see the presence of a roadblock for the trip of Itachi Tachibana, who has a wife and daughter.