Jowa

    Keywords: Culture & History, People

Considered by many as the strongest tactician ever. -- Bill


Born: 1787 in what is now Nagano

Died: 1847

Served as 12th Honinbo from 1827 and Meijin-Godokoro from 1831 until 1839 when he was forced into retirement.

Jowa was said to have great strength without equal. Historically he was accorded the title 'latter sage' to match Dosaku who was known as the 'former sage'. At some point in the meiji era this title was transferred to the more wholesome Shusaku as John Fairbairn has described [ext] elsewhere.

As was common in the Edo period, Jowa changed his name several times. The traditional view was that he was born Todani Matsunosuke but was also called Kadono Matsunosuke and Kadono Jowa at various points. Further research highlighted by John now suggests much of this is however incorrect. Search rgg for details. He was described as being of short stature, with bushy eyebrows and full cheeks.

He appears to have been the son of a travelling merchant, but little is known about his early years. Almost no game records exist before about 1807, when he was 20 and about 2 dan. At that point he left Edo to what is now Yamagata-ken and played a 21 game series against Nagasaka Inosuke. Although Nagasaka was officially also a 2-dan, the series started with Jowa taking sen, always Black, recognising that Nagasaka was in practice stronger. Jowa forced the handicap down to sen-ai-sen.

On returning to Edo, he began to improve rapidly and made 5 dan in 1815.

After the premature death, in 1812, of Okunuki Chisaku, then the prospective heir to the Honinbo House, Jowa's chances for career progression improved. In 1819, he was recognised as Honinbo Genjo's heir and promoted to 6 dan. In the official notification however, it appears that Jowa's age is understated by 8 years and Genjo's by 2. This perhaps reflects that, at 31, Jowa was a little on the old side. He also first played in the castle games in 1819, taking Black and beating Yasui Senchi by 5 points.

Another famous jubango Jowa played was against Awano Yonezo (Shinomiya Yonezo?), a famous go gambler. To Yonezo's surprise, Genjo recommended they play with a two stone handicap (Yonezo as black) and Jowa won 5 lost 4 with 1 jigo.

In 1827, Jowa was made Jozu? (7 dan) and became the 12th Honinbo when Genjo retired. In 1828 he became jun-meijin (8 dan).

Around this time the leading players were as follows:

Jowa and Gennan Inseki both had ambitions for the title of Meijin. A period of political struggle took place, with all the interested parties involved in different schemes. Jowa was eventually made meijin without playing a sogo against any of the other senior players. That he didn't have to prove himself over the board was thanks to Hayashi Gembi. Gembi used contacts of his within the Government to help Jowa. In exchange Jowa had agreed to promote Gembi to 8 dan upon becoming meijin.

Jowa never fulfilled this secret promise, angering Gembi. Gennan Inseki and those close to him were also outraged at Jowa's successful scheming. However the title of Meijin Godokoro was effectively a non-playing title. This meant that they had little chance of proving over the board that Jowa was not worthy of the position. Their one chance came in the famous Blood Vomiting Game when Jowa was manoeuvred into playing the rapidly improving Akaboshi Intetsu. To have lost to Intetsu, several ranks Jowa's junior, would have had implications upon Jowa's status. The game initially swung Intetsu's way, but Jowa managed to salvage a win. Tragically, whether due to the effort of the game or not, Intetsu died shortly after being beaten by Jowa.

After his contacts had died, Gembi eventually revealed the secret agreement he and Jowa had made and the bakufu officials forced Jowa into retirement in 1839.


Blake: Originally named Todani. Jowa was named heir to the Honinbo title in 1819 and succeeded in 1827. He is thought to have achieved his meijin title largely through politicking, because he had never played a game against any of the other three people who were seeking the title at that time: SenchiII, Inoue Genan Inseki, and Hayashi Genbi.[1] John Fairbairn quotes Honinbo Shuho from Hoen Shinpo: "If a person's art reaches the ultimate, we call him a sage. Dosaku and Jowa are the go sages par excellence."[2]

Tim Brent: Jowa did play Genan in 1815 on several occasions, when Genan was known as Hattori Rittetsu.

John F. Jowa played Genan many times over many years (and the others). Blake's comment, I'm sure, is meant to indicate that they didn't play at the appropriate grades.

YM?: I read in a book that Jowa wasn't a very good player from the start and only achieved 1 dan when he was 21. His Go skills suddenly improved a lot when one day, after losing a match, he stayed overnight in an old man's house deep in the forest on his way home. This old man gave him a four-handicap (his master only gave him 3 handicap). Not to be rude Jowa accepted it. In the end, he was shocked to see that all his stones had been captured. Well, even though he suddenly woke up later and found out that this was only a dream, he reviewed the game and it was true that all his stones had been captured. After this dream he became the good player that today we all know him to have been. This source is taken from: [ext] http://www.psc-a.org/sgf/story/rb/rbwqgs/rb16.htm (Visit the site if you understand Chinese.)

If any one knows about this game please e-mail me at :ym_84@yahoo.co.uk

John F. This is not the version I've seen in Japanese. There, Jowa (on his way to Musashi from Edo) after a dispiriting performance against Nagasaka, gets lost at night, sees a light, goes looking for somewhere to stay and ends up in a cottage with a white-bearded old man. There is a go board, but Jowa (actually still called Matsunosuke) is surprised to see both bowls contain white stones. They play. Then the old man shouts, "Don't you know what the score is?" whereupon Jowa wakes up at the side of the road. This story obviously is a variation of the Wang the Firewood Collector story from Tang China, which was well known in Japan from the Konjaku Monogatari. Jowa chose never to deny it, though, in the same way that he cultivated an air of mystery about his origins. Insofar as it may be based on a smidgeon of truth, Jowa was probably obsessed at the time with his failure to make inroads when taking White against Nagasaka.

Among quite a few errors elsewhere here, Jowa was already 1-dan at 16. This was long ago stated in Zain Danso but we now have a newly discovered game record to prove it (1802). At the time of his match with Nagasaka he is reckoned as 3d. Although Nagasaka (an amateur) was labelled as 2d he was rated as 5 or 6d in reality. It is surmised that Jowa could not afford the fee for a higher diploma, and of course the break caused by his fish-shop apprenticeship came around this time.

There is no game from the above story, but the next game with Nagasaka, where he started to turn the tide, was Game 11 in their series, which spanned a year.

kokiri (who wrote the main body of text above) John - I was wary of abusing any of the english language sources available and so tried to use them only to check some facts and that my reading of the Japanese was correct. As a result, for example, I made no mention of your work on Jowa's name as it was not mentioned in any of the sources that I used. I have ammended the above to at least refer to it - I hope that is OK.

Elsewhere, any errors are my own and I am grateful to you for pointing any out.

There is one thing I am interested in that a combination of my japanese and my source material is not good enough to answer. Charles Matthews refers to Nagasaka Inosuke as being a pupil of the yasui school, but I, in accordance, to your reference above understood him to be an amateur. I assume that this meant that he had studied in the yasui family but returned to 'normal' life. Is this correct and could you provide any other context? Thanks for your comments.

John F. Nagasaka was a spear instructor, and as a samurai had to go to Edo with his daimyo for extended stays. At that time the Yasuis were very propserous (more so than the Honinbos) because, under Yasui Senchi Senkaku, they had forsaken the glory of the Meijin-Godokoro in favour of teaching. They had a huge number of "pupils", so in modern terms this really meant nothing more than being a club member. This was also a time of a sudden rise in commercialisation in Japan, and many "pupils", especialy the temporarily resident samurais, would buy diplomas so that they could use them for status and profit on their return to their native province.

Awa no Yonezo (Yonezo of Awaji), Hama no Genkichi (Genkichi of Hamamatsu), etc were in a similar mould, though some descended to gambling go rather than teaching.


[1] According to Appreciating Famous Games by Shuzo Ohira 9p.
[2] [ext] http://www.msoworld.com/mindzine/news/orient/go/history/jowa.html


This is a copy of the living page "Jowa" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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