Tengen - the title
Tengen is the fifth of the seven big titles in Japanese professional Go. The winner's prize is ¥14,000,000 currently. All professional players of the Nihon Ki-in and Kansai Ki-in can participate. Tengen ("origin of heaven") is also a Japanese go term used to designate the central point of the go board.
The Tengen shares most of its structure with the other big titles in Japan - the winner of a preliminary tournament (in this case a single knockout tournament) plays a best of five match against the previous year's title holder. This has been the case since the 6th Tengen in 1980. Prior to that it was a match between the final two players from the knockout tournament, making it much more difficult to be a repeat title holder (as Kato Masao was able to achieve in 1978 and 1979).
Due to the importance of the Tengen as one of the "big seven" titles in Japan, there are several paths of automatic rank advancement through it in the Nihon Ki-in new promotion system. Challenging for the title warrants a promotion to 7-dan, actually winning the title promotes to 8-dan, and finally winning the title twice gives an immediate 9-dan promotion.
Winners:
1st 1975 Fujisawa Hideyuki (d. Ohira Shuzo 3-1) 2nd 1976 Kobayashi Koichi (d. Sugiuchi Masao 3-1) 3rd 1977 Shimamura Toshihiro (d. Sonoda Yuichi 3-1) 4th 1978 Kato Masao (d. Fujisawa Hideyuki 3-1) 5th 1979 Kato Masao (d. Kataoka Satoshi 3-0) 6th 1980 Kato Masao (d. Yamabe Toshiro 3-0) [1] 7th 1981 Kato Masao (d. Kobayashi Koichi 3-2) 8th 1982 Kataoka Satoshi (d. Kato Masao 3-2) 9th 1983 Kataoka Satoshi (d. Awaji Shuzo 3-1) 10th 1984 Ishida Yoshio (d. Kataoka Satoshi 3-1) 11th 1985 Kobayashi Koichi (d. Ishida Yoshio 3-0) 12th 1986 Kobayashi Koichi (d. Sonoda Yuichi 3-1) 13th 1987 Cho Chikun (d. Kobayashi Koichi 3-2) 14th 1988 Cho Chikun (d. Sonoda Yuichi 3-2) 15th 1989 Rin Kaiho (d. Cho Chikun 3-2) 16th 1990 Rin Kaiho (d. Kobayashi Koichi 3-1) 17th 1991 Rin Kaiho (d. Kato Masao 3-1) 18th 1992 Rin Kaiho (d. Yamashiro Hiroshi 3-1) 19th 1993 Rin Kaiho (d. Kataoka Satoshi 3-1) 20th 1994 Ryu Shikun (d. Rin Kaiho 3-1) 21st 1995 Ryu Shikun (d. Kobayashi Koichi 3-2) 22nd 1996 Ryu Shikun (d. Rin Kaiho 3-2) 23rd 1997 Kudo Norio (d. Ryu Shikun 3-1) 24th 1998 Kobayashi Koichi (d. Kudo Norio 3-2) 25th 1999 Kobayashi Koichi (d. Kudo Norio 3-0) 26th 2000 Ryu Shikun (d. Kobayashi Koichi 3-0) 27th 2001 Hane Naoki (d. Ryu Shikun 3-1) 28th 2002 Hane Naoki (d. Cho Sonjin 3-0) 29th 2003 Hane Naoki (d. Yamashita Keigo 3-2) 30th 2004 Yamashita Keigo (d. Hane Naoki 3-0) 31st 2005 Kono Rin (d. Yamashita Keigo 3-2) 32nd 2006 Kono Rin (d. Yamashita Keigo 3-1)
[1] Prior to the 6th Tengen in 1980, the title holder was required to play in the preliminary matches under the same conditions as all other participants. Therefore, repeating as Tengen was significantly more difficult before the 6th Tengen.