Japanese women's games

[Ferran]

Checking things around I found, this list of games by Japanese female pros. Not sure 100% all of them are pros, but I recognized Kita Fumiko. I haven't checked them thoroughly, but there seems to be no commentary. Anyhow, I thought it might be interesting to someone.

Take care.

PS: Does anyone know why Female Japanese players, as a group, have 流 / "ryû" attached? The uses I know (method, school, flow...) feel weird in this use.

Take care.

[xela]

Weird, this is just some random guy replaying the game records on his own board? And it has 2,000 subscribers and ads?

[Ferran]

Well, as I see it, there are two subjects in Go that are underserved:

+ Women. Name a female professional in HnG. I'll wait. There were three female go playing characters with some screen time as far, as I can recall: school mate/love intenterest, insei and ooteai opponent. That last one didn't even talk in the anime.

+ "Off Broadway" players. And I hope I'm not misunderstanding my own metaphor. Never been to NY, myself. But what I mean is that once you've seen the commentaries on Shusaku and a couple of Honinbo (and you won't even find that many of those in Western languages), maybe a sprinkled Yasui, there's very little out there about some great players who simply had more stellar players in their generation.

So. I can see why some 2k people worldwide would subscribe to a language-agnostic channel like this.

Take care

[Ferran]

Weird, this is just some random guy replaying the game records on his own board? And it has 2,000 subscribers and ads?

Well, if you prefer, this one has not yet 2 dozen subscribers and a list of (very vry slightly annotated) reviews from the Last Honinbo to AlphaGo.

Take care.

[xela]

Remarkable! The music isn't just theme music, it keeps going through the whole video. I can not survive half an hour of that. But thanks for the interesting cultural experience.

[Bill Spight]

Remarkable! The music isn't just theme music, it keeps going through the whole video. I can not survive half an hour of that. But thanks for the interesting cultural experience.

When I was a kid I went to a summer camp a couple of years where one highlight was a day trip to go see a professional baseball game. The second year I was one of the few campers who did not go to the game. How come? I could not stand the organ music during the game. {Hear no evil emoji}

[Ferran]

I have it muted.

Take care.

[Splatted]

PS: Does anyone know why Female Japanese players, as a group, have 流 / "ryû" attached? The uses I know (method, school, flow...) feel weird in this use.

This is a pretty standard usage of 流. It's hard to say specifically what it's referring to because I'm not all that familiar with the Pro system, but iirc there's at least a seperate accreditation "stream" for female players. Ryuu has somewhat crossed over to English thanks to it's usage in differentiating marshal art traditions, so it might seem strange that people who (presumably) receive the same training from the same people in the same place would be referred to as part of a different ryuu, but in Japanese the word is actually used quite widely to distinguish between different groups and systems. In this instance the female pro system maintains a degree of separation from the older system, so it is referred to as a different ryuu. I.e. 女流

Like I said I'm not familiar with how the system actually works. If the only difference is the initial accreditation then it might be excessive to refer to female players as 女流棋士, but if the rankings and titles continue to be awarded separately then the distinction is meaningful.

Edit: I said 流 has a wide usage but it's important that the things being separated in to ryuus are in some way related. You're free to divide up go players, but you wouldn't use the same word to contrast unrelated groups, like go players and shogi players for example. In fact I may have misspoken. The usage is broader than English synonyms and loan word usage would imply, but it's not a word you can just stick anywhere.

[Ferran]

PS: Does anyone know why Female Japanese players, as a group, have 流 / "ryû" attached? The uses I know (method, school, flow...) feel weird in this use.

Edit: I said 流 has a wide usage but it's important that the things being separated in to ryuus are in some way related. You're free to divide up go players, but you wouldn't use the same word to contrast unrelated groups, like go players and shogi players for example. In fact I may have misspoken. The usage is broader than English synonyms and loan word usage would imply, but it's not a word you can just stick anywhere.

So... "flow" kinda makes sense. You need a common stream... Okay. Thanks a lot.

Take care, stay healthy

[John Fairbairn]

It's got nothing to do with streams, martial arts or the price of fish. Joryuu is just the normal polite word for the fair sex in Japanese, and it's used in the same way that we talk (or we oldies used to talk) about the Ladies' Final at Wimbledon rather than the Women's Final. And it came from Chinese anyway (nvliu), where anciently the idea may even have been the 'weaker sex' from a meaning of liu as drifting > unstable > weak.

[Splatted]

Oh thanks for corrcting me John! I guess I never thought to look up 女流 specifically, being used to 流 as a suffix.

[Ferran]

It's got nothing to do with streams, martial arts or the price of fish.

I acknowledge that. I know I'm mangling ethimology. But it helps me remember it.

Joryuu is just the normal polite word for the fair sex in Japanese

Query... I think I saw a glimpse yerterday, in a recommended video on YouTube that obviously wasn't there net time I checked, a reference to Chinese-ryû [I'm not sure about the second kanji, and I don't remember it well enough to search it]. If women and China get their own "ryuha" [again, my apologies], would the Kansai Ki'in merit its own, too?

Thank you. Take care, stay healthy

[John Fairbairn]

reference to Chinese-ryû [

ryuu is indeed normally a suffix and the commonest meaning of it then is "in the style of" (or French à la). In go this means it is used for names of openings and Chuugoku-ryuu fuseki would be the 'Chinese fuseki', Kobayashi-ryuu fuseki would be the 'Kobayashi fuseki'. Some people ponderously translate these things in the form 'Kobayashi-style fuseki' but I think one needs to have confidence in one's own language

[Ferran]

In go this means it is used for names of openings

Found it, thanks to that reference to opening

Here

Take care.