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Discussing Sansa, "Honinbo" is mentioned as the name of the place where he lived. Does the word mean anything in particular?
Bob McGuigan: 本因坊 or hon'in bou is the name of a building on the grounds of the Jakkoji Buddhist temple in Kyoto. I'm not very knowledgeable about such esoteric things but in this context 本 might mean "real" or "original", 因 could be "cause", and 坊 means "priests' residence". I hope this helps. Maybe someone better informed than I am will correct me.
John F. To be pedantic, the statement about the Jakkoji temple needs to be put in the past tense. The existing temple has been relocated far away from the original and no longer has templets - it doesn't even have room for any. So there is now no Honinbo. In terms of size and prettiness it would rank about 10,000th of Kyoto's many temples, though it does have a Honinbo statue and a few not very special Honinbo graves.
I'm not well up on Buddhism, but hon'in is a Buddhist term for the origin of things, the locus classicus being (I believe) the Surangama sutra (the Ryogonkyo).
This page makes a reference to Sansa. There is a mistake there. His original name was Kano Yosaburo, not Nikkai. And to call him a Buddhist priest is like saying the Archbishop of Canterbury is a vicar. Sansa was the hoin, the numero uno.