Konishi Kazuko has just won her first title. Despite being 8-dan, the highest level so far for women in Japan, she has never won a title before (according to the Nihon Ki-in), and has rarely been even a runner-up.
Actually, she has won an event before, and that was the TV Osaka Cup in 2006, but that was only for women in the Kansai area, so presumably is being disregarded. The national event she has just won also restricted entry, being for women of 45 and over, but still... This was the 2nd Teikei Female Legends Cup. She beat Kuwabara Yoko in the final (Konishi has just turned 50).
She is a delightful person, and to mark this belated achievement, I present below an interview with her in 2006 that GoGoD commissioned from Pieter Mioch (himself a former insei). Despite being given here, I ask you treat this still as copyright material. Editorial notes in [ ].
QOUTE I STARTED playing go at 8, a little bit late compared to the average pro, I guess. My father taught me, he was about 1-dan and it took me a year to overtake him. Even before I learned to play go I had always loved playing games, especially card games. We often would play poker at home, so at first go was just another game for me.
Thanks to my interest and curiosity, I picked up the basics naturally and I started having pro aspirations from almost the first year I ever touched the stones. I remember feeling strongly attracted to the unlimited possibilities I could sense from the start. The patterns changing all the time, each new game is different from the previous one. Go was like a kaleidoscope to me, beautiful and highly attractive, I couldn't get enough of it.
My early teens were a hard time for me. When I was 12 my father passed away in an infamous plane incident*. I'm not sure why but I feel that those hard times had little influence on my go career. I was absorbed by the game and always have kept at it, rain or shine.
[* National flight 123 from Tokyo to Osaka lost part of its tailplane and crashed on 12 August 1985 killing over 500 people. It was the world's worst air accident involving a single airliner.]
I became pro trainee, or insei, at 13 and made pro at 16. Actually this was two years later then I had hoped, and to tell the truth, I probably could have made it earlier but as I said, I loved playing card games with other insei and young pros perhaps a little too much.
By the way, I quit school after the 9th grade in order to dedicate my life to go, to becoming a pro. It was a little bit scary to not go to high school, as it was not yet clear if and when I would actually make pro.
Because of the popular comic Hikaru no Go the image of the game has changed quite a bit - for the better, I mean. But when I was in 9th grade and ready to enter the pro ranks, most of my friends and classmates did not know about go at all. I was too shy to talk about go. Now I sometimes feel I missed a lot by not attending high school. If I could do it again I would like to experience a normal school life and go to college.
[Konishi (born in 1972) became a pro at the Kansai Ki-in in 1989. Her promotion was rapid. By 1995 she was 5-dan. She reached 7-dan in 2001, and her present grade of 8-dan in 2004. Pieter asked her why she chose the Kansai Ki-in. Konishi's recent results had included being runner-up in the 2005 Women's Saikyo and the TV Osaka Cup. She had won several prizes for popularising go, as well as for outstanding tournament results.]
The Kansai Ki-In started out as this thing with Hashimoto Utaro, you know, but I honestly think that today's pros do not think about that too much. Of course the memory of Hashimoto sensei is still very much alive at the Kansai Ki-in but there are at the same time plenty people here who do not see the need for two pro go associations in Japan, the Nihon Ki-in and the Kansai Ki-in. I happen to be a member of the Kansai Ki-in because my mentor, Mizuno Hiroshi 9-dan, belongs to this group. Other than that, there is no special reason why I should have elected to be a pro at the Kansai Ki-in.
Tournaments and games are all mixed now and pros from the Kansai and Nihon Ki-in play each other every week. We also have regular study groups together and in my eyes, we are one big happy family. Personally I'd like to see the two groups find a way to merge and become one again, as it was before the split off.
When looking at the current titleholders it is, however, not necessary to ask where the strongest pros in Japan are located. Anybody can see that the Nihon Ki-in pros are dominant. And yes, of course we are a bit envious of that. But, hey, there are a number of top flight pros here, too. It is not as if the Kansai Ki-in is completely without chance or has never shown the go world what it's made of.
[And her most memorable game?] It was eight or nine years ago I think. I was doing well in the women's Kakusei tournament and kept on winning, earning myself a place in the finals! I remember very clearly that with each win the tension inside me kept growing.
When I met Kobayashi Chizu for the final match I was totally stressed out, without even having played a single stone! I mean, it was like there was this big billboard inside my head saying: "You are one win away from taking the title. YOU are ONLY a SINGLE WIN away from WINNING this TITLE."
Well, I totally buckled under the pressure, I guess this was my lack of experience. Maybe it is just the kind of person I am.
Do I still know the moves played in that game? Ha, ha, well I certainly won't forget the result and the vague memory of having played a terrible game but you know what, I cannot even think of the first move played!
As a matter of fact, and I think that among pros I might be unique in that respect, most of the time I forget the games I play within a week! It's just that my memory is like a sieve. I never remember much of my own games afterwards. Maybe I just have only a limited memory storage capacity to begin with.
Ah, you know about the exchange games we played with pros from Seoul, do you? Well, it wasn't held last year and I think we had only two matches before that. We had picked out six top pros to meet the Korean pros but we were slaughtered in every game, it was humiliating.
I think that was the reason the sponsor lost interest in holding the event last year and I'm afraid the match will not be repeated this year as well.
But the 2005 European Go Congress held in Prague was wonderful. I always had wanted to visit such a grand event and, combined with a trip to Europe, I found it fascinating.
The congress itself might have been a bit of an excuse for an overseas holiday. Interacting with foreign go players, however, meant something of a culture shock and, as my knowledge of the English language is almost nil, it was not easy to get around. For example, I was forced into ordering only the items on the menu I had had before and knew what it was.
The culture shock? Well, people's attitudes are so completely different than what I'm used to. I was so surprised that while I was doing game analyses to show fans about certain moves almost nobody seemed to be remotely ready to take my word for it! I felt under siege most of the time, something I am far from used to when doing similar game commentaries in Japan. It was kind of freaking me out at first.
At the same time, though, I couldn't help but admire the informal and energetic way the people went about discussing go games - from a safe distance, though!
It also came as a surprise to see so many strong Korean students participate. I mean, here in Japan, people who can spend two weeks away from home are usually retired elderly people who have enough free time and don't need to worry about the cost of it all.
The Koreans were all very young. I don't know how they can manage that. Perhaps they had a sponsor or something. I played some games with Yoon Kwang-sun and was beaten a couple of times too.
During my stay in Prague, and while following the main tournament from the sidelines, I actually thought about forgetting teaching for a while and participating myself! If I did participate, as a Japanese born pro I think this would be a first, so I was a little bit worried how the Ki-in would react.
Come to think of it perhaps it would not be such a big deal as there are already pros participating - Dinerchtein, Catalin [Taranu], and so on. Looking at the field of the 2005 congress, however, I'm not so sure I could win. I'd like to find out!
Other impressions from the EGC 2005? Well, I haven't got much experience travelling abroad and I found it very hard to correctly guess people's age. Everybody usually turned out to be much younger than I had thought. When I was talking with this one couple, for example, I asked the girl, "Is he your father?" Well, it turned out that he was her husband, and younger than his wife at that! UNQUOTE
She deserves a medal, doesn't she?
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