I know it spoils the fun when facts get in the way, but ...
Does anyone recall the China-Japan Super-match series in which top pros from China and Japan duked it out annually? The last time this competition took place was 15 years ago. The Japanese cancelled the series because the results were becoming embarrassingly lopsided.
The Japanese didn't cancel it. The Japanese
company NEC did, and if you look at NEC's history of sponsorship of sporting events you will see that this fits a pattern. It is apparently their strategy to commit to a medium-term length of sponsorship only - perhaps they want to switch marketing targets every now and then, which seems plausible commercially. They stick to that whether the results are good or bad. For example, they sponsored the English football club Everton for about ten years and quit in 1995, they very year that Everton won the FA Cup. Perhaps NEC wanted to quit at the top. If so, the lopsided results would fit that pattern, from ther point of view. But the original aim of the NEC go exchanges, made explcit at the time, was to boost the level of go in China. This had the strong support of the Japanese government which saw it (correctly as it turned out) as a way of normalising Sino-Japanese diplomatic relations. In other words, it was not a gang of Japanese go players trying to crush weak opposition for cheap glory. Nor was it Japanese players trying to test themselves. Their job was to "lend their chests", as the sumo wrestlers put it, so that pupils could practise pummelling them. Job done, I'd say. Good time to quit.
Instead of embracing tougher international competition so as to improve her own level of play, Japan chose to walk the isolationist path and turned inward. Iyama's not participating in international tournament is in keeping with this tradition of isolationism: no point in playing if its players are not going to do well.
Since Japan takes part in every international event, and even hosts some, and Iyama himself has not only taken part in international events and even won one (and lost another only because of a rules quirk), how does this translate into walking an isolationist path and turning inwards?
There is a case to say that the Japanese are inward facing, but that is not because they are turning inwards: they have always faced that way in sponsorship terms. Japan's flirtation with international events came when certain companies (Fujitsu, Toyota, NEC, Ricoh etc) tried to expand markets, especially in China. Economic woes in Japan and the rise of Chinese competitors apparently put the kybosh on that. The core companies that have always supported Japanese go, the newspaper companies, in contrast are mostly inward facing. Their newspapers are written in Japanese. Not many outside Japan want to read Japanese. So these companies can be considered naturally inward facing. This is not much to do with go players directly, but we can certainly see why they might want to align themselves with their sponsors.
Of course, Japanese players are not going to improve unless they play against stronger Korean and Chinese pros; but saving face is apparently more important.
The fact that Japanese players take part in all international competitions and often lose (though do sometimes win), while their magazines also report the international scene avidly, doesn't seem to square with face saving, does it? In any case, face saving in Japan doesn't really mean what most westerners think it means. It includes components such as making sure the
other side doesn't lose face. In the case of go events, for example, when invitations to international events come up, or when re-scheduling is proposed, they have to be mindful that Japan has two competing go associations, the Nihon Ki-in and the Kansai Ki-in. This rivalry is sometimes quite bitter, and conspiracy theorists may wish to note that golden-boy Iyama is a Nihon Ki-in pro but is from the Kansai. I'm not a comspiracy theorist myself, but putting one over on the Kansai Ki-in would be more important than playing with foreigners to some fans and even some Nihon Ki- people I have met. Think Everton-Liverppol, Redsox-Yankees, etc etc.
Little wonder why Japanese Go is on a continuous decline. To reverse it, Japanese players must adopt a different attitude: no pain, no gain.
What continuous decline? The fall-back in the temporary Hikaru no Go blip hardly counts as continuous. The underlying trend in government figures has been fairly stable for quite some time, especially if you factor in the declining funds available from local councils. If you factor in the unknown numbers playing on the internet there has probably been an increase. If you are referring only to professional go in Japan the same question applies: what continuous decline? There has been a difficult period of adjustment to the digital age, certainly, but adjusting is not usually classed as decline. Except in scale, it's not much different from the difficulties faced by, say, western go clubs and go publishers. These activities may be declining but that doesn't automatically mean go in the west is declining.
Since Japanese professionals have embraced a huge raft of changes, including laying off admin staff and cutting pensions, I'd say they have already adopted a different attitude and have accepted plenty of pain.
Maybe facts are not so boring after all...
