original title：趙治勲 私の履歴書（16）名譽名人
Original article: The Nikkei
Author: Cho Chikun, Honorary Meijin
After the intense battle with Hideyuki-sensei in the Kisei match, I moved from Kisarazu City in Chiba Prefecture to Toke Town in Chiba City. Although we had only lived in our newly built house in Kisarazu for four years, the distance from the station—about 5 kilometers—prompted the move. While it usually took 10 minutes to drive, traffic jams could extend the trip to 30 or 40 minutes, making it difficult to reach the Nihon Ki-in in Ichigaya, Tokyo, for my matches. Reluctantly, I also rented an apartment in Tokyo as a secondary residence.
In Toke Town, the house was just a two- or three-minute walk from the station. I immediately liked the place after a friend introduced it to me, and I decided to purchase it without hesitation. While I’m often indecisive in matches, I made this decision unusually quickly.
Just as I did in Kamakura and Kisarazu, I soon opened a Go salon near my home in Toke Town and quickly integrated into the local community. I even built a house nearby and brought my wife’s parents from Asahikawa to live with us. My mother-in-law was delighted to run the Go salon, but my father-in-law felt lonely without friends to drink with. Perhaps he would have been happier spending his later years in Asahikawa.
After moving to Toke Town in May 1983, my first title match was the Honinbo title match. The challenger was Rin Kaiho-sensei.
Rin Kaiho-sensei had guided me in a special match when I first came to Japan. Known for his tenacious playstyle, often referred to as “nimai-goshi” (two-staged power), he was the type of opponent I struggled with. His slow and gentle attacks were difficult for me to counter.
In this series, I won the first three games but then became complacent, losing the next four from the fourth game onward. My previous experience of coming back from three consecutive losses to win four in a row in the Kisei match had made me a bit overconfident, but just four months later, I found myself in the exact opposite situation. This experience taught me the importance of momentum in best-of-series matches and marked the end of my “Grand Slam.”
Although I had quickly reached the pinnacle of the Go world, my skills were evidently not yet fully refined. While I sometimes performed exceptionally well in matches, there were also moments of defeat.
In February 1983, just before the Honinbo match, I won the NHK Cup for the first time. The widespread congratulations surprised me, as I hadn't realized the extent of the response to televised Go matches. On the other hand, in the Tengen match, which began in March, I lost the title in a fiercely contested final game against Masao Kato.
However, I successfully defended my Meijin and Kisei titles. In the Meijin match, particularly in 1982 and 1983, I defeated Hideo Otake-sensei with a score of 4-1, winning the Meijin title for the fourth consecutive time. By 1984, Hideo Otake-sensei once again became my challenger as I aimed for a fifth consecutive win, which would qualify me for the title of Honorary Meijin. This was his third consecutive challenge against me.
In reality, Koichi Kobayashi had been leading the Meijin League that year. Since he was an opponent I didn’t particularly like facing, I spent a lot of time preparing strategies for him. However, the situation in the latter half of the league became very complicated, and in a tiebreaker, Hideo Otake-sensei defeated Koichi Kobayashi to become the challenger.
I was the most flustered by this, as all my preparations had been in vain. Hideo-sensei, on the other hand, probably felt a pleasant surprise. This match deeply taught me that Go is a psychological game, and I completely lost the first three games.
However, in the fourth game, I resolved to change my approach, resulting in a win with a completely different style from the previous games. From there, I went on to win four consecutive games, ultimately securing the Honorary Meijin title and gaining a renewed understanding of my psychological weaknesses.
This was my second time achieving four consecutive wins after three consecutive losses. This record didn’t appear again in both the Shogi, Go world until the Ryu-oh title match in 2008, but I experienced it twice, along with a series where I won three games only to lose the next four. My matches have always been extremely tense and thrilling.
By Ryu-oh, do you mean Cho U 9p?