Life In 19x19

This time around the ladies have been playing in the final of their special pro qualifier since January 12th. They have finished six of a scheduled nine rounds with two games this weekend and the last on February 9th. One person will qualify.

Three people are tied with one loss:
Kaneko Maki (金子　真季), 17, an Insei from Tokyo
Fujiwara Akiko (藤原　彰子), 15, an Insei from Tokyo
Arai Miyu (新井　満涌), 18, a Gairei (non-insei) from Tokyo who won the All Japan Ladies Amateur title last March.

Kaneko ranks highest among the three on the insei listing so, as with the men, she would be declared the winner in the event of a tie among them. Still waiting in the wings, however, is Hoshiai Shiho (星合　志保), 15, the top ranked insei in the tournament. She has two losses already but will win any tie. On Saturday, the 2nd, Fujiwara and Kaneko play while Arai and Hoshiai square off. On Sunday, the 3rd, Fujiwara and Arai play. So there should be some changes in the standings.

None of the insei mentioned above have a sponsor/teacher listed on the Nihon Kiin insei page. Hoshiai seems to be (or has been) a member of Kikuchi Yasuro's school Ryokusei Gakuen. L19 readers may recognize Fujiwara from Antti Törmänen's blog about his time as an insei. She was one of his main rivals, mentioned several times.

Changes indeed! Unfortunately Fujiwara Akiko lost to both Kaneko and Arai, dropping to three losses and right out of the running. However, both Kaneko and Arai lost their other game so no one is left at one loss. As a result, the line up of people with two losses for the last game on Saturday is: Hoshiai, Kaneko, Arai, and Iwata Saeka (p? - 岩田　紗絵加) who is a 16 year-old insei and student of Ishida Yoshio. I left Iwata out of the original post since she is the 5th-ranked insei in the tournament and seemed to be out of things. However, her last round game is against Hoshiai so one of them will end up with only two losses. If Iwata beats Hoshiai and Kaneko loses her game, Iwata will make pro. If Iwata wins but Kaneko wins as well, Kaneko will make pro. If Hoshiai beats Iwata it is all over regardless of what happens to Kaneko as Hoshiai at the head of the insei list. Since either Hoshiai or Iwata has to end with two losses, Arai is already out of the running, despite having only two losses, since she ranks behind all the insei.

Actually Iwata has been in this position before. She tied with Fujisawa Rina and Deguchi Maruko (出口 万里子) three years ago. However, at that time Fujisawa was the the top-ranked insei and qualified as pro.

Edit: As luck would have it Iwata appears briefly at about 2:40 of the video toward the bottom of this blog post, as the Shimokitazawa Cat tours the Shimokitazawa Igo Kaikan!

This all sounds suspiciously exciting. How are we supposed to know that ez4u hasn't somehow confused the Ladies Pro Qualifier with a children's television show?

Obviously because there are no anime characters and/or ghosts in my report. The cat, being a real person dressed in an idiotic costume, is standard adult entertainment on Japanese TV/video!

Thanks for the video ez4u.
I used to live very close to Shimokitazawa and went to this salon quite often before it got relocated to its current location (about 4 years ago I think).
This is a simple and nice place, non-smoking if I remember correctly, which is rare and tends to attract (or to not repulse) young players.

In the end, Hoshiai beat Iwata on Saturday and won promotion to shodan. Kaneko also won, but to no avail.

BTW, Hoshiai's older brother Shingo (17) is also an insei. He played in the winter qualifying tournament. He was one of the seven players that finished in the huge tie at 9-6 in the race for the second spot (and promotion) in that tournament.