Charles This terminology in English goes back a number of decades. Any Japanese or other term?
Bill: I usually see them referred to as tennozan, the name of a famous hill, which is also used to indicate a/the strategic point.
(Later): I see that the term, focal point, does not appear in the 2001 edition of the Go Players Almanac. Where does it appear in the go literature?
unkx80: I suspect tennozan is 天王山. =)
Bill: Yes. Thanks for the characters. :-)
unkx80: Then it is written exactly the same way in Chinese. =P
RobertoCorsini: I believe the term Focal Point refers to the simple fact that the move brings focus of the whole game into that area. It may not be a direct sente, but if left unanswered it will most likely prove to be a disaster. Thus, the one who makes a focal point move forces the opponent to do so as well - or find an even bigger move - possibly changing the course of the game.
Velobici: Could you look at merging focal point and tennouzan ? The Chinese go terms page points to focal point and the Japanese go terms page points to tennouzan...yet both are 天王山;
Bill: Tennouzan is the more general term in Japanese (maybe in Chinese, too). What is somewhat misleadingly called focal point here -- and maybe elsewhere, but I asked for references and got none -- is one kind of tennouzan.
unkx80: Frankly speaking, my idea of what is exactly a "focal point" and what exactly is "tennouzan" is a bit fuzzy. Searching for "focus point" on Google does not seem to give a lot of hits. Nonetheless, here are some references I found:
I originally equated "focus point" with "tennouzan" on the basis of what was written on the parent page, but it does not seem to be true anymore. As such, I conjecture that:
In this respect, I propose to replace the Chinese term of "focus point" with 焦点, which is actually a direct translation of "focus point" in normal usage.
My understanding may be wrong though. Please correct me if it is so. =)
Bill: Thank you so much for the references, unkx80! :-)
As for focal point and tennouzan, I guess they are just terms that overlap sometimes.
unkx80: I guess, they overlap to quite a great extent, that they may be used interchangably for most of the time, I suppose?