Meijin/ Discussion

HandOfPaper: Meijin is also the name of Akira's father in Hikaru No Go. This make sense because, in that show, he's supposed to be the best go player in the world.

Fhayashi: It's not his name, it's his title, since he is the current Meijin. Just like President isn't George W. Bush's first name. (On a side note, there are many cases in which people take on special names when they achieve a certain ranking - not just in Takagawa Kaku's case of changing his name to Shukaku, but wholesale change of given and family names to the traditional name, as in the case of the two top ranked sumo wrestling referees. But there's none of this in go - You are Meijin when you hold the title, you are Judan when you hold the title, etc.)

Zarlan: That isn't true. Hon'inbo was and still is a name you receive. Nowadays you only keep it as long as you are the winner of the Honinbo tournament, but you still get the name, however temporarily.

Chris Hayashida: So is "president" a name that you get temporarily? :) The name Honinbo was handed over to the Nihon Ki-in. No one can be adopted into the Honinbo family. So it's a title. There's also the linguistic argument: It's Touya Meijin, and not Meijin Touya. So unless he's changing his first name to Meijin, he's using it as a title. If he was changing his familyi name, it would be Meijin Koyo (or something a new first name, too.) The same is true of the other titles. For example, look at the Honinbo (Cho U Honinbo) and Judan (Ogata Judan, from Hikaru no Go.)

Velobici: Touya Meijin is family and title. The series also has Kuwabara Honinbo and Zama Oza. In each case the format is family followed by title.

HandOfPaper: Does Hikaru no Go ever reveal the given name of Akira's father? As of today (11/29/2004), I have only seen the first 12 episodes.

HolIgor: Yes, it does. He is Toya Koyo as I remember.

Zarlan: Touya Kouyo

Chris Hayashida: Both are correct. Japanese romanizes in several different ways.