Hon'inbō Sansa (本因坊算砂, 1559 – June 13, 1623) was the assumed name of Kanō Yosaburō (加納與三郎), one of the strongest Japanese

Go players This article gives an overview of well-known Go professional, professional and amateur players of the board game Go (game), Go throughout the ages. The page has been divided into sections based on the era in which the Go players played and the ...

of the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

(1603–1867), and founder of the house of Hon'inbō, first among the four great schools of Go in Japan. He was a

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

priest of the Nichiren sect, and his original

dharma name A Dharma name is a new name acquired during both lay and monastic Buddhist initiation rituals in Mahayana Buddhism and Pabbajjā, monastic ordination in Theravada Buddhism (where it is more proper to call it Dhamma or Sangha name). The name is ...

was Nikkai (日海).

Life and career

Nikkai was born in Kyōto and became a

monk A monk (; from , ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many reli ...

at age nine. The name "Hon'inbō", (originally pronounced "Honninbō"), comes from a sub-temple of the Jakkōji temple complex in Kyōto where Nikkai, the first "Hon'inbō", resided. Among his students were the ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

s''

Oda Nobunaga was a Japanese ''daimyō'' and one of the leading figures of the Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods. He was the and regarded as the first "Great Unifier" of Japan. He is sometimes referred as the "Demon Daimyō" and "Demo ...

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods and regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: ...

, and

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

, the three great "unifiers" of

feudal Japan The first human inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago have been traced to the Paleolithic, around 38–39,000 years ago. The Jōmon period, named after its cord-marked pottery, was followed by the Yayoi period in the first millennium BC whe ...

. Nikkai considered the three generals to be "fifth-degree" players (五子, comparable to amateur 4 or 5 dan), but "diplomacy" was likely a factor in Nikkai's even-handed assessment of these imposing figures. It was Nobunaga who, in 1578, recognized twenty-year-old Nikkai as the first ''

Meijin is one of the eight titles in Japanese professional shogi player, professional shogi, and is the most prestigious title, along with Ryūō. The word ( "excellent, artful", "person") refers to a highly skilled master of a certain field (the ...

'' of Go. In 1582, Nikkai, at the behest of Nobunaga, was involved in a notorious game at the Honnōji Temple against his rival, another Nichiren priest, Kashio Rigen (鹿塩利玄 b. 1565). (Apparently, there is a theory that "Kashio" and "Rigen" were two different people. See the Japanese version of this article.) The game is traditionally held to have taken place on the eve of the treacherous Incident at Honnōji, (in which Nobunaga was forced to commit

seppuku , also known as , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honor, but was also practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era (particularly officers near ...

), and is said to have ended in a " triple ko". Hence the notion of triple ko as bad omen. There is a go game record, but typical for the period, it is incomplete. The triple ko may have occurred, somewhat implausibly, in unrecorded remaining plays, or in another game that day, but in the end, there is no evidence that this is more than a good story. In 1587, Nobunaga's successor, the regent ('' kampaku'') Hideyoshi gave Nikkai an official position, (forerunner to the office of '' Go-dokoro''), granting his temple an annual four ''

koku The is a Chinese-based Japanese unit of volume. One koku is equivalent to 10 or approximately , or about of rice. It converts, in turn, to 100 shō and 1,000 gō. One ''gō'' is the traditional volume of a single serving of rice (before co ...

'' of

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

and setting up a tournament that he attended in person. In 1592, Nikkai was given the rank of '' Gon-no-Daisoku'' by the Go-Yōzei Emperor. In 1603, the Go-Yōzei Emperor recognized sixty-year-old Tokugawa Ieyasu as ''shōgun'', inaugurating the 250-year rule of the Tokugawa bakufu. At the direction of Ieyasu, Nikkai turned priestly duties at Jakkoji over to his younger brother Nichiei and became the first ''go-dokoro'', in which office Nikkai was provided fifty ''koku'' of rice and five servants. Also around this time (), Nikkai took the name ''Hon'inbō Sansa'' (''Sansa'' written 算砂: the characters for "calculating" and "sand"). Sansa was also a strong ''

shogi , also known as Japanese chess, is a Strategy game, strategy board game for two players. It is one of the most popular board games in Japan and is in the same family of games as chess, Western chess, chaturanga, xiangqi, Indian chess, and janggi. ...

'' player, but in the Tokugawa period, go was organised into four "houses" (or "academies"), and

into three, which would compete in '' oshirogo'' "Castle Go" (and "Castle shogi") tournaments for the title ''

''. (See more at '' History of shogi § Modern shogi''.) The official nature of these arrangements meant that go and shogi masters held different offices. In 1612, eight go and shogi players were given individual state support. This system persisted over two and a half centuries, until the collapse of the Tokugawa government itself in the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored Imperial House of Japan, imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Althoug ...

. The beginning of the '' oshirogo'' matches in Edo, seat of the Tokugawa government, meant that at the end of each year, Sansa had to travel east for a month. He is said to have turned down an official residence in Edo's early

Nihonbashi is a business district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan, which sprung up around the bridge of the same name that has linked two sides of the Nihonbashi River at this site since the 17th century. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603. The curre ...

district, but was given other accommodations. (It was the unrivaled fourth Hon'inbō, Hon'inbō Dōsaku (1645–1702) who finally moved the school to Edo.) Sansa died in Edo at the age of 65.

Legacy

Honinbō Sansa was succeeded by a youth named Sugimura, who due to his age, had to wait several years after Sansa's death to re-establish the Hon'inbō house as Hon'inbō San'etsu when he turned twenty. However, the title of ''Meijin'' was regained by the third head of Hon'inbō, and altogether, seven of the ten generations of historic ''Meijin'' were Hon'inbō. In addition, all three traditional '' Kisei'' ("Go Sages") were Hon'inbō masters. (Both ''Meijin'' and ''Kisei'' are now titles administered by the

Nihon Ki-in The Nihon Ki-in (), also known as the Japan Go Association, is the main organizational body for Go in Japan, overseeing Japan's professional system and issuing diplomas for amateur dan rankings. It is based in Tokyo. The other major Go associat ...

.) The school established by Hon'inbō Sansa, along with the

Inoue Inoue (kanji: , historical kana orthography: ''Winouhe'') is the 16th most common Japanese surname. Historically, it was also romanized as Inouye, and many Japanese-descended people outside of Japan still retain this spelling. A less common varia ...

and Yasui schools, lasted into the 20th century, but struggled without government backing. In 1936, the last Hon'inbō master, the controversial Hon'inbō Shūsai, turned selection of the Hon'inbō title over to the Nihon Ki-in. (See Honinbō Tournament.)

In popular culture

He has been featured in the Japanese

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

Hikaru no Go is a Japanese manga series based on the board game Go (game), Go, written by Yumi Hotta and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The production of the series' Go games was supervised by Go professional Yukari Umezawa. It was serialized in Shueis ...

References

* ''Life of the first "Hon-in-bo"'', Takeshi Ishikawa, Monthly Go Review 1961/7
Homepage of the Jakkoin Temple

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Honinbo, Sansa 1559 births 1623 deaths Japanese Go players Japanese shogi players Japanese Buddhist clergy Nichiren Buddhist monks People from Kyoto Professional shogi players from Kyoto Prefecture Buddhist clergy of the Edo period 16th-century Go players 17th-century Go players