"When I saw the move, my eyes, for some reason, filled with tears.
'What a lucky guy I am,' I thought," wrote the novelist Sakae Saito in
an account of a shogi match he wrote for the Mainichi. It was 1979, the
fourth game of the Meijin championship between Meijin Makoto Nakahara
and Kioh Kunio Yonenaga.
The move, denoted in shogi as S-5g, has since become the stuff of
legend, often talked about as a brilliant gambit made in the final
stages of the match. "He went out of his way to make a move that
allowed his opponent to take his silver general. But because of that,
Nakahara's king could not be mated," Saito explained.
Nakahara, the 16th Honorary Meijin, is said to have been
expressionless as he made the move, after staring at the board for
about two minutes. However, he admitted 30 years later that "I played
the move thinking that it may make history," at a press conference
announcing his retirement from professional shogi.
Nakahara beat 15th Honorary Meijin Yasuharu Oyama in 1972 to become
the youngest Meijin in history, winning nine consecutive Meijin
championships and twice later. He was still recovering after suffering
a brain hemorrhage last summer, but after making the decision to end
his professional career, he declared, "I have enjoyed competing on the
grand stage to the fullest. I have no regrets."
Yasuo Harada, a ninth dan (grade) player, describes Nakahara's style
as "'Shizen-ryu' that wins the game before anyone knows it."
"Shizen-ryu" or "natural style" was the perfect name for a style that
appeared rational, effortless, and dignified -- but from Nakahara's
point of view, aggressive.
"I wouldn't win if I played 'naturally,'" he said. To those of us
who watched on the sidelines, his desperate maneuvers were strong
enough to seem like they merely flowed naturally.
The S-5g has been hailed as the most significant move of Nakahara's
illustrious career. The shogi gods who guided Nakahara at that moment
are now probably plotting clever stratagems to be played by young shogi
players. The torch -- one for a shogi hand that will bring tears to the
eyes of those watching -- has been passed on to the next generation.
("Yoroku," a front-page column in the Mainichi Shimbun)
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