Honinbo Shuei

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    Keywords: Culture & History, People

Honinbo Shuei (本因坊秀栄 Hon'inbō Shūei, 1852-1907) was the 17th and again 19th head of the Honinbo house.

Shuei was also 13th and final head of the Hayashi house, which in 1884 Shuei merged into the Honinbo house. He was very active and innovative in the 1890s and he played in a number of jubango. Some photos show Shuei in a fine beard.

Shuei was quite a remarkable player. His surviving game records show a very large number of handicap games. It seems he exceeded his contemporaries by a fairly wide margin in a relatively recent era. The other best players of the day (e.g. Honinbo Shusai) appear to have needed at least the handicap of the black stones to play him.

In Go World issue 24 (March-April 1981) there is an interview with Fujisawa Shuko where he states that:

...[Shuei] was the strongest of the Meijins and Honinbos. There were many strong players, like Shusaku and Shusai, but I definitely think that he was stronger than those two.

and

He had superb positional judgement. There's nothing unnatural in the flow of his moves... I always have the feeling that I'd be no match for him... I'm far below his level, but I like his go. The brilliance of his play from the fuseki to the middle game is outstanding.

These appear to be Shuko's true feelings and not just modesty since after two more questions he also says that no Japanese player is currently a match for him and that his go is on a higher level than that of his potential challengers for the Kisei title.

Shuei flourished at the time Arthur Smith wrote one of the first go books in English, The Game of Go - The National Game of Japan. Smith calls him "Shuyei", and notes that he had been the only 9-dan after the fall of the Shogunate to that time.


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Spirit For some time now I've been very interested in Shuei's style. Much to my dismay I found that it's very hard to find any of his games records. I've managed to compile about 250 games so far, many from his early career. But he should have played at least 3 or 4 times as many. If anyone knows of a good source - electronic or in paper please let me know. My sgf collection can be found here: [ext] Shuei.rar. It contains many duplicates though so I advice to use Kombilo or some other database program.

Velobici: This book [ext] 秀栄 日本囲碁大系 第17巻 contains 24 games commented by Takagawa (高川 格). Its the 17th volume of an 18 volume set jointly published by the Nihon Ki-in and the Kansai Ki-in.

Bob McGuigan: That book is out of print, unfortunately. I have a copy and it's a wonderful book. A more recent book, published by the Nihon Ki-in as part of a seven volume series of books on great masters of the past, is this one: [ext] 流水秀栄―古典名局選集 but it seems not to be available from amazon.co.jp.

Spirit I have a copy too (no. 17) and it's indeed a great book. I've searched on amazon.co.jp. But even with google translate it's not too clear what they are though unfortunately.


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This is a copy of the living page "Honinbo Shuei" at Sensei's Library.
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