Today in history: June 17
In today's column, we will continue to review the historic Battle of Honinfang in Japan. This game, which started from the old era and laid the foundation for many modern Go rules such as news chess battles and sticker systems, has become a boundary monument for the hegemons to divide the era after walking through the muddy early stages that were fragmented by the chaos of war. Katsura Takakawa, Eio Sakata, and then Hayashi, the "Showa Pioneer". Lin Haifeng singled out the Three Giants of Taisho, Sakata/Takakawa/Fujisawa, while ending Sakata's ligature in the Battle of Honinbo. However, Ben Infang and celebrities are a little different after all, and the next year Lin Haifeng did not wait for Sakata or other Taisho predecessors, and it was the pioneer under The Kidani Gate who got the right to challenge, the killer Kato.
In 1969, in the 6th round of the 24th Japan Honinbo Challenge, Lin Haifeng defeated Masao Kato in the black mid-game.
If viewed with the modern eye that pursues speed, efficiency, and fame early, Masao Kato's path as a chess player will seem strange and difficult to understand. 10-year-old to learn chess, 12-year-old into the Mugu Gate, 17-year-old fixed section! If you put it into today's Chinese training system, children who only learn chess at this age will not have teachers to suggest that you take the career road, and the 17-year-old fixed period is also a rhythm that should take the stubble home to study and find a university on the road. However, Masao Kato, who started so late, was the earliest of his wave of Mugushi brothers. In the fourth year after the fixed period, Kato passed the triple selection consecutively, entered the Honinbo circle, which was regarded as the identity certificate of the first-class chess player, and with the consciousness of "don't lose all", Kato won 3 and lost 4 unfortunately. However, the next year Kato immediately returned to the circle of circulation, which was also the first year that Sakata was selected by Lin Haifeng, and after a scuffle, Kato, Takakawa Katsura and Hideyuki Fujisawa were tied for the top spot with a result of 5 wins and 2 losses. In the play-offs, Fujisawa eliminated Takakawa, followed by Kato, who was watching from the sidelines, came across with a difficult comeback to defeat Fujisawa. 22 years old, five dan, went to challenge Ben Infang!?
If the 23-year-old Lin Haifeng made the Japanese chess community understand that "it is best not to pay too much attention to age when measuring strength", then the outbreak of Masao Kato has once again refreshed people's cognition, "Don't care about anything in the dan position".
The challenge itself did not have too many waves, the first set Lin Haifeng won the second set Kato equalized, and then Lin Haifeng won two consecutive wins to get the match point, before the start of the 5th set, Kato set off from the Kitani Dojo, Kitani and his wife led the disciples to fight for him until they were sent to the road, and as a result, Kato took back a city with a sharp knife technique, and in the 6th round, that is, 47 years ago today, Lin Haifeng ended the battle.
More profound than the challenge itself is the reaction of the talents of the Kidani Dojo. The friends who get along day and night still squeeze into the crowded dormitory of the dojo with themselves at night, and during the day they go to the highest stage in the chess world to compete for the crown. What a spur to Otake, who had already moved out of the dojo to live independently, how much of an inspiration it was to Yoshio Ishida, who was in the same room as Kato, and what kind of inspiration was it to koichi Kobayashi and Cho Ji-hoon, who were still young. History has been turned a new page by Kato, and the "modern flower-shaped chess players" that Kitani has painstakingly cultivated in the second half of his life are about to compete for glory.
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