Spectrum of the Soul - The Biography of Masao Kato (I)

Single-minded determination to reach the top

Masao Kato's first step towards becoming a professional chess player was in the spring when he first entered junior high school.

On the morning of April 5, 1959, Masao Kato and his father, Kiyo Kato, who had received permission to enter Kitani, arrived at Kitani's house in Hiratsuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture, on a rickety night train. After attending the opening ceremony of the junior high school, Masao Kato was immediately asked to play a game of chess with his brother. It was the first game of chess after arriving at the teacher's house, and Masao Kato lost in a terrible way.

The father saw his son's fiasco and experienced the power of the teenagers who targeted professional chess players. That night, while bathing in the hot spring with his son, the father asked his son, "Tomorrow, will we go home together?" "I just came here today, do you want to go back immediately?" The son asked rhetorically.

In April of that year, the Emperor of Japan, who was still the crown prince at the time, got married. Japan, which was suppressed for more than a decade after World War II, is full of impetuous emotions.

Father mused.

Kitani shigeru was a great player with a dazzling position alongside Wu Qingyuan in the Showa era Go world. He is not content to be just a first-class professional chess player, he and his wife Miharu work together to cultivate the next generation of professional chess players as their mission, and use this as the meaning of their own survival.

In the Kidani Dojo, more than a dozen talented teenagers gathered from all over Japan live together and practice chess together. At that time, the master brother was the Otake hero who later won the celebrity position, in addition, there were Kato's contemporaries Haruyama, Ishida Yoshio and other teenagers.

Professional chess players live in a world of victory and defeat – as inner disciples, this sentence is severely struck into their hearts. As long as you face the chessboard, you must not compromise.

Even a novice cannot be forgiven. Keep being defeated, and keep getting up until you completely defeat your opponent. The young Kato also had to endure such a baptism.

In his hometown, Masao was highly praised as a "genius teenager", and professional chess players who played introductory test chess with Kato before Kimiya learned the art also praised Kato's chess as "wonderful". It is precisely because of this that his father, Kiyo, has the intention of sending Masao to The Kidani family...

My father once exchanged information with Masao's elementary school teacher about Masao's chess learning, and told the teacher that he was "going to send Masao to the Kitani dojo to learn chess", and the teacher strongly objected. "It's not okay to let a child become a person who plays Go. If a child can become a chess player when he graduates from junior high school, what if he fails? So what to do? ”

In the world of Go, there are people who have become famous as professional chess players, but success is not an easy task. At that time, gambling was popular in local Go clubs, and professional chess players as a serious profession were gradually declining.

In the face of his father, who was suddenly weak, Masao said flatly, "Everyone spends all their time learning chess in the dojo, of course, it is strong." I'm going to learn chess here. ”

The next day, my father returned to his hometown alone from the station in Hiratsuka City. Kitani's disciple Shibata, who was on a send-off trip together, still remembers that Kato's father, who was standing on the platform, had tears in his eyes. Putting his son, who had just graduated from elementary school, in a strict dojo to study, the sadness in his father's heart was beyond words.

At this time, the son's small chest neutral made a dark determination. Later, Kato said to his wife, "I came out of the house with great ambition. At the station in my hometown, people sang and danced to send me to the teacher's house to learn art, and even the mayor of Fukuoka City personally came to see me off, and I must not go home in a gray state."

The young Kato, in this situation where he could not retreat, could only get up alone even if he was knocked down.

Masao Kato (Keigoko)

White Square Kitani Shi nine sections

A total of 147 hands were won in the white mid-game

Translation reproduced from Sina Sports (translated by Luo Xiaosi)