by John Power, Japan Correspondent for the E-Journal
Fujii Sota sets new record
In my report at the end of May, I took the liberty of writing about a shogi debutant who was making waves. First he set a record by becoming the youngest player, at 14 years two months, to qualify as a shogi professional. That earned him some attention in the media, but the attention became a media frenzy when he started playing games and didn’t lose. I wrote the previous report when he reached 19 successive wins, the seventh-best in shogi. On June 28, he matched the previous record of 28, set in 1987, then on June 29 he broke it, scoring his 29th win over the only other teenaged shogi professional, Masuda Yashiro 4P (aged 19), who won the King of the New Stars title last year. By this time, the media had become obsessed with Fujii. A hundred reporters turned up at the Shogi Hall to see the above-mentioned games start. Throughout the day (both games lasted over 11 hours), TV provided a stream of updates. The game was the lead-off item on news programs, even while it was still in progress and they switched to live coverage when it ended. The daytime “wide shows,” usually devoted to colorful crimes and scandals, hired shogi professionals to give commentaries. (Newspapers printed extras for both the 28th and 29th games. There were also two Net broadcasts, with a combined audience of 11 million.) It felt as if the whole nation shared the disappointment when Fujii finally suffered a loss in his 30th game.
Fujii’s success sparked a shogi boom, especially among young children, who flocked to join shogi classes. Go has never experienced coverage like this, and apparently it surpasses the media attention earned by Habu Yoshiharu’s Grand Slam on 1996 (as in go, a simultaneous grand slam has been achieved only once).
Fujii was born on July 19, 2002, so he turns 15 next month. The previous record for a debutant was 11 successive wins. Before Fujii go has the upper hand, with Hiroe Hiroyuki 9P winning his first 12 games in 1983 (he was 16). He is followed by Yoda Norimoto (aged 11) and Mizokami Tomochika 9P (aged 15), and Ida Atsushi 8P, all with 11 (they were all 1-dan, of course). By coincidence, Fujii’s new record of 29 successive wins is the same as the go record, set by Sakata Eio in 1963-64. The content is not the same, however. The average rank of Fujii’s opponents was 5.77 (by the way, the win over Habu Yoshiharu I mentioned in my previous report was not part of the streak; it may have been an unofficial game, but I can’t find it). Sakata’s opponents included the elite of the contemporary go world.
I’m not trying to carp about Fujii’s record. As a go player, I followed the Fujii saga with amazement and the purest envy. As far as I know, Iyama’s grand slam last year, garnered just a minute or two on the news.
Closing note: One program has a segment devoted to shogi terms that had passed into general speech and threw in a few go terms for good luck. Unfortunately, their diagram for “dame” (in the sense of worthless points) was completely wrong.
photo (top right): Fuji playing Kato Hifumi, at 77, the oldest active shogi player. First game of the winning streak. Kato retired around the time Fujii set his record. Out with the old, in with the new. He was the previous youngest shogi pro.
working on a new series of video commentaries with E-Journal Managing Editor Chris Garlock, focusing on the AlphaGo self-played games as well as recent tournament games by Redmond himself, that have been influenced by AlphaGo. “AlphaGo jumps into the middle game pretty quickly (and) the fighting in the middle game is amazing and there are a lot of moves that took me by surprise,” says Redmond. “Michael has been working incredibly hard to explain these incredibly complicated games so stay tuned and fasten your seatbelt!” Garlock added. The videos are being produced by Michael Wanek.
Go Spotting: AlphaGo and Beyond; Robopocalypse Now? Kubo and the Two Strings
Sunday July 23, 2017
AlphaGo and Beyond: The national security blog Lawfare last month posted an article called “AlphaGo and Beyond: The Chinese Military Looks to Future ‘Intelligentized’ Warfare,” reports Kyle Highful. “Among other things, this article discusses alleged Chinese censorship of AlphaGo’s match with Ke Jie, recent advances in American and Chinese artificial intelligence, and possible military implications of AI
breakthroughs like AlphaGo.”
Robopocalypse Now? The 2017 Summer issue of “The Bent” has an article titled “Robopocalypse Now?” that includes several paragraphs on AlphaGo as an example of the recent progress in Artificial Intelligence, reports Jeff Newmiller. The Bent is the official news magazine of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society. “The title was a bit of fluff… the conclusion of the article is that AI is more likely to yield surprise responses to unexpected input than to purposely mislead us.”
Kubo and the Two Strings: “Last weekend I watched the movie Kubo and the Two Strings (right), released in 2016 by Laika Entertainment and currently available on Netflix,” writes Alicia Seifrid. “It is a stop-motion fantasy film set in feudal Japan. Early in the film, the main character Kubo goes into the village, and you see the villagers going about their everyday lives, including two men playing go. Thanks as ever for sharing so much enjoyable and interesting go news!”