Shusai
Honinbo Shusai (本因坊秀哉 Hon'inbō Shūsai) is the professional name of Tamura Hoju, also known as Tamura Yasuhisa (田村 保寿, 1874 -– 18 January 1940), a Japanese professional Go player.
21st and last hereditary head of the Honinbo house, as well as the 10th Meijin when that title stood for the highest Go authority in Japan, rather than the winner of the current annual title duel. Shusai played a role in founding the Nihon Ki-in and turned the Honinbo title over to the Ki-in, who changed it from a hereditary title to a tournament.
Known as Tamura Yasuhisa, until 1908.
Pupils
- Murashima Yoshinori
- Hayashi Yutaro
- Fukuda Masayoshi
- Maeda Nobuaki
- Miyasaka Shinji
- Kanbara Shigeji
- Kogishi Soji
- Miyashita Shuyo
- Shikama Chiyoji
- Murata Seiko
- Takeda Hiroyoshi
- Masubuchi Tatsuko
- Karibe Eisaburo
Related Material
- Honinbo Shusai - Complete Game Collection
- Shikatsu Myoki, a problem book by Shusai
- Shiroto Kikan Jissen Shokai (素人棋鑑), a book for amateurs by Shusai
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![[ext]](images/extlink.gif)
Games by Honinbo Shusai, SGF files
A Famous Play
![[Diagram]](diagrams/3/1ec108e486f0810c7a3a4afee13b737c.png)
Shusai played a very famous game with Go Seigen in which there was a lot of controversy surrounding his adjournment of the game. Maeda Nobuaki is supposed to have been the one to find 
in the diagram above. There was, of course, a lot of controversy surrounding this accusation.
In Pieter Mioch's interview with Go Seigen, he says:
The game to one side, Go had the following to say on Shusai in the interview: "Was Honinbo Shusai a villain? He was a scoundrel! How the Ki-in manages to deify this person of all people is unbelievable!"
He goes quiet for a moment, then suddenly he declares in a surprisingly loud voice and with much agitation: "A villain. He was a villain! He is now praised to the skies by the Ki-in and depicted as one of the heroes of this century, yet - mark you well - he sold his title to the newspapers for mere lucre and bought with it a fair-sized piece of land in Tokyo without giving one cent to the Ki-in or the go world." And so he goes on...
Shusai's 1938 retirement game against Kitani Minoru was the subject of Kawabata Yasunari's famous novel The Master of Go.
![[Welcome to Sensei's Library!]](images/stone-hello.png "Sensei's Library")