Text: Xiao Jiantao (Columnist for Reading History)
On June 12, 1914 (the 19th day of the fifth lunar month), Wu Qingyuan was born in a large feudal family in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, and his grandfather Wu Weizhen once served as a Daotai in Zhejiang. Wu Qingyuan's grandfather Zhang Yuanqi was a former official and a royal historian, and he also had a pivotal position after the founding of the Republic of China.
It can be said that Wu Qingyuan was born in a famous family, Wu Qingyuan's father Wu Yi once studied in Japan, during this period, Wu Yi came into contact with and fell in love with Go, and brought back a large number of Go books from Japan, which had a deep impact on Wu Qingyuan's way of Go in the future.
When Wu Qingyuan was four years old, her parents took her to Beijing to join her grandfather. In Beijing, Wu Yi specially invited a tutor to teach the three wu qingyuan brothers, and every day he accompanied the four books and five classics such as the Analects and the Zhongyong, which played an important role in the formation of Wu Qingyuan's Go thought.
In addition to learning Confucian classics, Wu Yi also taught children to learn Go. Soon, Wu Yi found that his youngest son Wu Qingyuan was making rapid progress in Go. Since then, Wu Yi has carefully taught Wu Qingyuan, guiding his son the basic knowledge of Go such as layout and stereotyping.
Wu Yi was full of expectations to cultivate Wu Qingyuan to move forward on the road of Go, and the talented little Wu Qingyuan also lived up to his father's expectations, and the moves on the chessboard became more and more mature.
However, the good times did not last long, and before long, my father fell ill and died, and the situation in the family suddenly became embarrassing. Under the introduction of his father's friend, Wu Qingyuan entered the palace of Duan Qirui, the premier of the Beiyang government. The first time he fought with Duan Qirui, Wu Qingyuan won a great victory, and everyone present was shocked. That year, Wu Qingyuan was 11 years old.
Since then, Wu Qingyuan has been able to enter and leave Duanfu for a long time, and Duan Qirui has funded 100 oceans per month for Wu Qingyuan's life.
In that era when warlords rose up and went their separate ways, Duan Qirui soon lost power in a new round of struggle, and Wu Qingyuan once again lost his source of livelihood.
After a period of living selling his property, by chance, Wu Qingyuan entered the Japanese Club in Beijing. In the club, Wu Qingyuan once again beat Japan's junior professional with his excellent performance. At that time, Wu Qingyuan had just turned 12 years old.
The wonderful game in the club attracted the attention of some Japanese Go enthusiasts, and someone told the famous chess player in Japan who was also Wu Qingyuan's future teacher, Kensaku Setsushi.
Setsukoshi was a chess ancestor who loved talent very much, and at the same time, under the increasingly tense Sino-Japanese relations at that time, Setsukoshi was also one of the few people of insight in Japan who supported Sino-Japanese friendship.
Once a game of Wu Qingyuan's game against a Japanese chess player was passed to Setsukoshi, who sighed after careful study: "This child is the reincarnation of Hideyoshi!" ”
Hideyoshi was a chess saint in the late Edo period of Japan, and made outstanding contributions to the development of Japanese Go and even modern Go.
Sekoshi saw Hideyoshi's shadow in Wu Qingyuan's body, and the sensitive Setsukoshi realized that a new god of Go was about to be born.
At that time, China was still in a state of scattered sand, without a stable social environment; and Chinese Go at that time was even more backward and primitive than Japan, so the matter of letting Wu Qingyuan study in Japan was put on the agenda.
Under the operation of Setsukoshi, after some difficult negotiations, Wu Qingyuan was finally able to travel east to Japan for free and systematically learn Go.
After Wu Qingyuan arrived in Japan, he ushered in a real challenge. As the symbol of the strongest chess power in the Japanese chess world, the celebrity of Honinfang Hideya personally played a test game with Wu Qingyuan to make the second son. The two sides came and went on the chessboard, killing inextricably, and finally Wu Qingyuan defeated Xiuya celebrities with a four-purpose advantage and caused a sensation throughout Japan.
In 1929, when Wu Qingyuan was 15 years old, he was awarded the title of Three Dan by the Japanese Chess Academy, and began his promotion path.
Under the careful guidance of Kensaku Setsukoshi and the sparring of his brothers, Wu Qingyuan's chess strength became ever-changing, almost touching the highest level of Go at that time. In the process of studying, he also met his future friend and strong opponent, Kitani Shiki, known as the "Strange Boy Maru".
After a series of battles, Wu Qingyuan successfully rose to the fifth dan of the profession, during which time he and Mugu Shi worked out the "new layout" method that caused a sensation in the chess world.
The so-called layout is dozens of hands of chess played at the beginning of the game, in other words, it lays a good foundation for the whole game.
There is a so-called "golden horn and silver edge grass belly" in Go, when the chess players at that time in order to better control the sides and corners of the chessboard, in the layout of the general chess at a low position, greatly reducing the efficiency of a son. The "new layout" method proposed by MuguShi and Wu Qingyuan tried to play chess pieces in some higher positions, providing ideological liberation for the rise of genres such as "cosmic flow" and "Chinese stream" in the future.
Soon after, in April 1933, 19-year-old Wu Qingyuan once again sat in front of the chessboard with the 60-year-old Honinfang Xiuya.
At the beginning of the chess game, Wu Qingyuan stepped out of the new layout method of "star, three three, and tianyuan", a classic layout that has been passed down to this day, and in the context of the time, this move was revolutionary.
Then Wu Qingyuan and Xiuzha began to fight, Wu Qingyuan pressed forward step by step, Xiuzha could not resist, and hurriedly called a pause. At that time, the rules of Go did not require too much of a game of chess, and after repeated hangings, the game actually lasted for three and a half months.
Every time Xiuya returned home, she gathered her disciples together to discuss the next move. Finally, Xiuya's disciple came up with a clever trick in the 160th hand, Xiuzha played chess according to the plan, and finally defeated Wu Qingyuan with a slight advantage of 2 and a half eyes, which was not a victory.
It is said that it was the white 160 that Came up with by Hideya's disciple Maeda Chen'er
But regardless of the victory or defeat, Wu Qingyuan has completely gained a foothold in the Japanese chess world after this. But the new legend of chess has just begun.
In 1939, Wu Qingyuan Qidan began a move with Mugu Shi, and the losing party would be "demoted", that is, from then on, it would lose the qualification to play equally with the winner, and for chess players, the feeling of inferiority was very humiliating.
By 1941, Wu Qingyuan had won 6 and lost 4, demoting Mugushi to a lower level. But due to the harshness of Sino-Japanese relations, countless insults, threats and intimidation poured into this nascent Go genius. But Wu Qingyuan has always firmly believed in a truth: a chess player can die on the chessboard is to die as he deserves.
Soon after, Wu Qingyuan demoted Yan Jin zhuan to eight paragraphs. Shortly after that, Wu Qingyuan was successfully promoted to the eighth dan.
With the outbreak of the Pacific War, the Japanese mainland was constantly bombed, and Wu Qingyuan's way of Go was terminated for a long time. During this period, he was superstitious about a religious group in Japan and has been running around for religious affairs.
After the end of the war, in 1946, Wu Qingyuan once again played the third ascension and descent with his brother Hashimoto Yutaro, and Wu Qingyuan won 6 and lost 2, demoting his former brother to the grid.
In 1948, Wu Qingyuan and Kaoru Iwamoto played a duel of up and down juban, demoting the opponent with a score of 5 wins and 1 defeat. Soon after, Wu Qingyuan received the highest honor of chess player, the title of Nine Dan.
In the 1950 showdown, Wu Qingyuan demoted Hashimoto Yutaro for the second time. Later, in 1951 and 1952, Wu Qingyuan downgraded his opponent Kunosuke Fujisawa twice. Unable to bear such humiliation, Fujisawa announced his retirement from the Japanese chess academy after the game.
In 1953, Wu Qingyuan demoted Einan Sakata, nicknamed Razor.
In 1956, Gao Chuange, who had just received the title of Benyinfang, was demoted by Wu Qingyuan.
So far, Wu Qingyuan has demoted all opponents in ten juban chess duels, and it can be said that no one in the Japanese chess world at this time can play a parity with Wu Qingyuan.
However, things must be reversed, in 1961 Wu Qingyuan suffered a serious car accident, since then, Wu Qingyuan's state has been completely lost, and it is difficult to maintain the legend of undefeated chess in the new generation of chess.
In 1984, Wu Qingyuan, who was already a rare man, announced his retirement. In the game of withdrawal, all the famous chess players come to pay tribute to a generation of Go masters. Hashimoto's first hand was placed in the position of Tengen in the middle of the chessboard— that was Wu Qingyuan's first duel with Honinbo Hideya.
In his later years, Wu Qingyuan devoted himself to cultivating younger generations of chess players, and many later well-known chess players such as Lin Haifeng and Rui Naiwei were his disciples. Well-known chess players such as Wang Runan, Liu Xiaoguang, Chang Hao, etc. have all been promoted and guided by him.
Wu Qingyuan also combines traditional Chinese culture with Go, and he is committed to promoting the construction of Liuhe Go in the 21st century, and its ideological essence coincides with Alpha Go's go philosophy.
In his later years, Wu Qingyuan especially agreed with the ancient Chinese idea of "moderation", for which Wu Qingyuan, who was already eighty years old, still wrote his Go ideas and personal stories into his personal biography "The Spirit of Zhongzhong" in his later years.
It can be said that Wu Qingyuan's achievements in Go are unmatched, but he has never considered himself a genius, but only feels that he is just working harder than others all the time.
On November 30, 2014 (the ninth day of the tenth lunar month), Wu Qingyuan died in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, at the age of 101.
"One for the world's law, and for the foreign teacher", this is the most accurate evaluation of Wu Qingyuan.