Ōhashi Hirofumi’s Banri Ikkū

Published 29 Jan 2021 by antti (last edited 29 Jan 2021)
tags: tsumego, book

I love the smell of tsumego in the morning.

I just received in mail the newest, recently-published tsumego book from Ōhashi Hirofumi 6p, our Nihon Ki-In English class member as well as a regular visitor to European go tournaments. The problem collection includes some of Ōhashi’s most interesting creations from the past 20 years, with the difficulty level of the problems being considerably high. Just look at the following difficulty scale:

  • ★: Amateur dan players
  • ★★: Amateur high-dan players
  • ★★★: Japanese prefectural champion players
  • ★★★★: A-class insei players
  • ★★★★★: Professional players
  • ★★★★★★: Human top players
  • ★★★★★★★: Spacemen

While most of the problems in the book don’t involve shapes that occur in actual games, content-wise I would still find it fair to describe the book as a ‘modern Igo Hatsuyō-Ron’.

Here are a few photos of the book:

The book’s title is Banri Ikkū, whose origin is Miyamoto Musashi’s Book of Five Rings. Literally the title means, ‘no matter where you go, everything is under one sky’; but the philosophical meaning is more like ‘keep on practising with determination’.
This is Ōhashi’s handwritten signature with the idea phrase , or ryūgyoku. Literally this translates to ‘dragon jewel’, but I asked the author who told me the phrase is actually read ‘Dragon Ball’, and is a hint for the 99th move in the last problem of the collection.
A sample two-page spread from the book

Ōhashi has shown some interest in having the book translated into English (possibly by me) and distributing it as an ebook. If you would like for this to happen, please leave a message as a comment in this post!


Comments (7)


sirocco wrote 3 years, 10 months ago:

Wow! This looks fantastic. Rarely do we see a tsumego book that covers such a breadth of skill levels. Would LOVE to see this translated into English. Love the title and book design as well!


StinkyTofu wrote 3 years, 10 months ago:

YES


Lebertran wrote 3 years, 10 months ago:

I'm looking forward to this! I actually prefer real books for tsumegos, but I'm willing to try it out as an eBook.


HelcioAlex wrote 3 years, 10 months ago:

Yes, please!


ThisIsSeki wrote 3 years, 10 months ago:

10/10 would buy!


antti wrote 3 years, 10 months ago:

I actually got an offer for a physical book already, so it looks probable to happen, too!


Frederer wrote 3 years, 10 months ago:

A very good idea indeed but the level seems too high too be useful even as a 7 dan on fox...