Chaim (Chajkel) Janowski (June 15, 1853 in

Wołkowysk Vawkavysk ( be, Ваўкавы́ск, ; russian: Волковы́ск; pl, Wołkowysk; lt, Valkaviskas; yi, וואלקאוויסק; names in other languages) is one of the oldest towns in southwestern Belarus and the capital of the Vawkavysk ...

– 10 January 1935 in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

) was a Polish

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

master and organizer. Born into a Jewish family in Wołkowysk (then

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

), he was the older brother of Dawid Janowski. He was educated in

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canti ...

(then

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

) where lived and played chess for many years. Chaim twice took fourth in 1897 and 1898 (Wiktor Abkin and

Gersz Salwe Gersz Salwe (12 December 1862, Warsaw – 15 December 1920, Łódź), also written Salve, pl, Henryk Jerzy Salwe, italic=no, was a Polish chess master. Biography Salwe was born into a Jewish family in Warsaw (then Russian Empire). He was Szlama ...

won), won followed by Samuel Rosenblatt, W. Abkin, Mojżesz Grawe, in 1899/1900, and took 3rd, probably behind Salwe and Akiba Rubinstein, in 1904/1905. He was one of the founders of Music Association "Hazomir" in Łódź in 1901. Chaim Janowski became the second (after a Russian colonel Konstanty Manakin) president of the Łódź Chess Club (''Łódzkie Towarzystwo Zwolenników Gry Szachowej'') in 1907-1912. In that time, he was an organiser of the fifth All-Russian Masters Tournament (1907/1908), and tournaments in which

Frank James Marshall Frank James Marshall (August 10, 1877 – November 9, 1944) was the U.S. Chess Champion from 1909 to 1936, and one of the world's strongest chess players in the early part of the 20th century. Chess career Marshall was born in New York Cit ...

and

Efim Bogoljubow Efim Bogoljubow ( or ), also known as Ewfim Dimitrijewitsch Bogoljubow, ( (); also Romanized ''Bogoljubov'', ''Bogolyubov''; uk, Юхим Дмитрович Боголюбов, Yukhym Dmytrovych Boholiubov; April 14, 1889 – June 18, 1952) ...

participated. After the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he played in a team match Warsaw vs. Łódź (lost two games to Dawid Przepiórka) in 1922. Then, he went abroad and settled in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. Later, together with his son, he moved to Japan. His wife, Hanna, a music school teacher, died in 1900 at the age of 26. He died in Tokyo and was buried in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

, close to a small, local Jewish colony, in 1935. His son, Leon, became a professor of the Tokyo conservatoire.

References

1853 births 1935 deaths People from Vawkavysk Belarusian Jews Jewish chess players Polish chess players Belarusian chess players Sportspeople from Łódź Chess players from the Russian Empire {{Belarus-chess-bio-stub