well, after reading many posts about this in other threads, this may as well deserve an own thread.

my first question would be. why don't they even compete? usually japan just sends the seeded players, but the preliminaries are only played by the youngsters and the internationalisers? but not by the top pros that didn't get the 2 or 3 seeded places.

One of my theories is the prize money. Most top international titles still pay a fraction of what the top three Japanese titles do. Also, wasn't there an international tournament this year (Samsung or BC Card) that didn't pay game fees?

I also believe Japan's lack of success is the lopsided representative count.

BC Card Cup: 2/64
LG Cup: 4/32
Samsung Cup: 3/32
Chunlan Cup: 5/24 (Their best ratio; 4 out of 5 advanced to the second round and Cho Chikun made it to the third round)
Fujitsu Cup: 13/32 (sponsored by a Japanese company)

In the upcoming Fujitsu cup it looks like there will be 13 Japanese players, 8 Chinese, and 7 Koreans. I think the format has been changed some from last year.

http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/fc.html

And that includes all the current big title holders:
Cho U (Kisei, Oza)
Iyama Yuta (Meijin, Judan)
Yamashita Keigo (Honinbo)
Yuki Satoshi (Tengen)
Sakai Hideyuki (Gosei)

The others are Cho Chikun, O Meien, Ogata Masaki, Yamada Kimio, Hane Naoki, Takao Shinji, Fujii Shuya, and Seto Taiki.

All in all there should be lots of exciting matches. It's a bit of a shame Iyama Yuta and Gu Li play in the first round...

But cool that they play.

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