Rin Kaiho

Rin Kaihō (Lín Hǎifēng, 林海峰, b. 6 May 1942 in Shanghai, China), is a Taiwanese, professional 9-dan of the Nihon Kiin. He was a top player from the mid 1960s to 1990s, holding over 35-titles. Rin holds the title of Honorary Tengen for winning the Tengen title for five consecutive years; remained in the Honinbo league for 39 consecutive years. On 6 August 2015, he achieved his 1,400th career win (889 losses 2 draws), the second player in history to achieve this number Cho Chikun.

Rin was brought over to Japan and trained by Go Seigen. He is the teacher of Cho U.

Table of contents Early life Name Style Rank Promotion Titles Head-to-head scores against other leading players Pupils Personal life Links Notes Pictures References

Early life

Rin Kaihō was born Lín Hǎifēng in Shanghai, China. He became a student of Go Seigen when Go brought him to Japan in 1952.

Rin's rise to fame came in 1965 when he challenged Sakata Eio for his Meijin title. Rin, at the time, was still only 23 and critics thought he would stand no chance against the powerful Sakata. Even Sakata himself said that no go player under the age of thirty should be Meijin. However, Rin put up a great fight and disproved the old convention. Rin would continue winning the Meijin on different occasions, along with the Honinbo, during the late 1960s and early 1970s. He last challenged for a big title in 2001 (the Meijin). Rin became the first professional in Nihon Kiin history to reach 1,300 career wins. He won the game against Anzai Nobuaki on 19 October 2006 in a preliminary match for the 32nd Kisei.^[1] Rin currently resides in Tokyo, Japan, but remains a citizen of Republic of China (Taiwan).

Name

The character of his surname 林, means “forest”. It is read Lín in Chinese. In Japanese, it is read as Rin in the On’yomi (Chinese reading), but can also be read as Hayashi in Kun’yomi (Japanese reading). It is also part of the name Kobayashi (小林 “little forest”), where the pronunciation is changed to “bayashi” as per rendaku, (regular sound changes in Japanese where voicing is added to a character that is a non-initial part of a word).

His given name 海峰 means “ocean peak”, from 海 = sea, ocean' and 峰 = summit, peak. In Chinese it is Hǎifēng, Japanese On’yomi: Kaihō (Katakana カイホウ), Japanese Kun’yomi: Umimine (Hiragana うみ みね).

Style

In 1984, the Yomiuri Kisei report over the 8th Kisei final said the following:

In his younger days, Rin was a slow-paced player who plugged away steadily taking territory and slowly grinding the opponent down. He could play like this because he had complete confidence in his endur­ance. However, he had the bad luck to run into a player, Ishida Yoshio, who was even better than he at this slow-paced kind of go. After losing his Honinbo and Meijin titles to Ishida, Rin embarked on the laborious process, which took him most of his 30's to complete, of reorganizing his game and giving it a complete overhaul. The new Rin tries to lead the game into fighting as early as possible.^[1]

Rank Promotion

• 1955: 1d
• 1955: 2d
• 1957: 3d
• 1958: 4d
• 1959: 5d
• 1960: 6d
• 1962: 7d
• 1965: 8d
• 1967: 9d

Titles

• 1965: 4th Old Meijin
• 1966: 5th Old Meijin
• 1966: 3rd Pro Best Ten
• 1967: 6th Old Meijin
• 1968: 23rd Honinbo
• 1969: 24th Honinbo
• 1969: 8th Old Meijin
• 1970: 25th Honinbo
• 1970: 17th NHK Cup
• 1971: 10th Old Meijin
• 1972: 11th Old Meijin
• 1973: 12th Old Meijin
• 1973: 21st Oza
• 1973: 10th Pro Best Ten
• 1974: 21st NHK Cup
• 1974: 11th Pro Best Ten
• 1975: 8th Hayago Senshuken
• 1975: 13th Judan
• 1977: 2nd Meijin
• 1978: 25th NHK Cup
• 1979: 1st Kakusei
• 1983: 38th Honinbo
• 1984: 17th Hayago Senshuken
• 1984: 39th Honinbo
• 1987: 20th Hayago Senshuken
• 1989: 15th Tengen
• 1990: 3rd Fujitsu Cup
• 1990: 9th NEC Cup
• 1990: 16th Tengen
• 1990: 3rd Tengen-Tianyuan Match
• 1991: 17th Tengen
• 1991: 4th Tengen-Tianyuan Match
• 1992: 14th Kakusei
• 1992: 18th Tengen
• 1993: 19th Tengen
• 1994: 19th Gosei
• 1998: 20th Kakusei

Head-to-head scores against other leading players

(Based on Rin Kaiho, Go rating profile and game list

• Go Seigen (his teacher): 2–1
• Cho U (his pupil): 1–2
• Kobayashi Koichi: 31–51
• Cho Chikun: 38–47
• Takemiya Masaki: 27–32
• Otake Hideo: 33–39
• Ishida Yoshio: 23–25
• Kato Masao: 44–46
• O Meien: 12–5
• Yoda Norimoto: 19–18
• Kudo Norio: 11–6
• Yamashita Keigo: 2–6
• Fujisawa Hideyuki: 32–25
• Fujisawa Hosai: 6–3
• Sakata Eio: 38–22
• Takagawa Kaku: 14–13
• Sugiuchi Masao: 10–1 (Rin’s only loss was Sugiuchi’s last win of his life when he was 94 years and 6 months old 23 April 2015, while Rin was only 72 years and 11 months old)
• Hashimoto Utaro: 14–5
• Shimamura Toshihiro: 8–3
• Yamabe Toshiro: 3–3
• Ohira Shuzo: 8–3
• Kajiwara Takeo: 6–2
• Hane Yasumasa: 12–9
• Ishigure Ikuro: 2–2
• Lee Changho: 4–8
• Cho Hunhyun: 1–8
• Yoo Changhyuk: 1–3
• Nie Weiping: 5–7
• Ma Xiaochun: 3–4
• Yu Bin: 2–1
• Cao Dayuan: 2–0
• Chang Hao: 0–4
• Michael Redmond: 1–1

Pupils

• Cho U
• Fu KoBai
• Rin Kanketsu
• Rin Shien

Personal life

In 1967, the year he became 9 dan, Rin met his future wife Wáng Láidì (王来弟), She is the youngest of three daughters of Wang Shuangling, president of the Osaka Chinese Association and chairman of the Osaka Chinese School. Her older sister was once Lin Haifeng's classmate at the Osaka Chinese School. Their first meeting was a blind date arranged by Yuan Tisu, one of his father’s good friends and secretary general of the Taiwan Go Association.

Rin Kaihō and Wáng Láidì announced their engagement two years later. Taiwanese Vice President Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦; Yán Jiāgàn) served as the witness (see video: Vice President Yen meets with Lin Haifeng and Wang Laidi.

The couple have one son and two daughters. Their son Rin Toshihiro (Lin Minhao 林敏浩) works for a semiconductor company and is currently the dean of Hǎifēng Go Academy in Taiwan (an amateur 5 dan). The two daughters are named Rin Hiromi (Lin Fangmei 林芳美) and Rin Yoshimi (Lin Haomei 林浩美), and are both amateur dan players and go program commentators on Japanese TV. Rin Hiromi, who is now a mother of four children, said that she had never heard her parents quarrel.

Links

• English Wikipedia
• Chinese Wikipedia
• Japanese Wikipedia
• Nihon Ki'in profile
• Go Ratings and Game List

Notes

• A game between Rin Kaihō (Black) and Komatsu Hideki resulted in eternal ko (1993 Sep 23).

• At the age of 59, he challenged for the Meijin title again in 2001, but lost 4–2 to Yoda Norimoto.

• In 1968, Rin became the second person to hold the Meijin and Honinbo titles simultaneously.

• In 2007, Yi Ch'ang-ho mentioned that Rin is his most respected professional for his respectable personality.

• Rin only needs to win the Kisei tournament to have won all seven major Japanese titles.

• Starting in 1964, Rin had entered the Meijin League and remained in the league (including being the Meijin title holder) for 39 consecutive years, which is a record for all go tournaments in Japan.

Pictures

Lin Haifeng, fiancée Wang Laidi, Dec 1967 (Image credit: memory.culture.tw)

Taiwan VP Yen Chia-kan (2nd right) meets Lin Haifeng (3rd right), future wife Wang Laidi (2nd left), and others (Image credit: tcmb.culture.tw)

Otake Hideo and Rin Kaiho chikurin duo (Image credit: Foxwq.com)

References

[1] Go World, Iss. 36, p. 42.