From: Reijer Grimbergen ETL GO JP> Date: 26 mar 1996 Subject: This week in Shukan Shogi (no. 628, March 27th 1996) It's interview time! There is currently no title match going on and the season is more or less over with the end of the Junisen, so much room in Shukan Shogi for some reflection and some looking ahead. There is a profile and an interview with Moriuchi, the challenger of Habu in the Meijin match. They show a cartoon of Moriuchi with all the trivial knowledge you can get. He usually sleeps 8 hours a day, he usually carries about 70,000 yen in his wallet, his favorite foods are Yakiniku (grilled meat) and sushi, his favorite Shogi piece is a rook and he now has 4 kimonos for official matches. Let's hope he can wear one at least twice against Habu :-). Most of the interview is about looking back on the events in this year's A-junisen. More interesting are his ideas about the coming Meijin match. I can not translate everything but the fact that he and Habu have been playing together since they were kids is a big advantage for Moriuchi. He will not fear Habu as much as the older players do. Of course it is Moriuchi's first major title match, but I still think he can win at least two games. If he does this in the first part of the match anything can happen... The other interviews are with the players who promoted from B2 and C1. Ueno talks about the new way to get famous in Japan. He was the first player to beat Habu after the seven crown sweep and was on every major TV channel after that. When he went for a drink with a friend the next day, a man he did not know stepped up to him and asked: "Hey, you're the guy who beat Habu, isn't it? Can I have your autograph, please." After that the man went to telephone and called someone, saying to the person on the other end of the line: "Come quickly, the man who beat Habu is here." For Urano, the other new player in B1 next year, there is more time for reflection. It took him six years to get out of B2 and that means he might have missed his shot at a meijin title. He was a very talented player, becoming 4-dan when he was only 19 years old, but at 34 it will be very difficult to get to the A-class, let alone winning it. Unfortunately my Japanese is not good enough to understand the comments of Hatakeyama about his twin brother, who is still in C2. For Goda it seemed more or less normal to promote and the interview with him is therefore not too interesting. Of course even when the week is slow, there are always results. Main story is about Habu's win in the NHK against Nakagawa which I reported already last week. I also said that I thought that it might have been the first time someone won both TV tournaments. Of course I was wrong. The king of quickplay, Kato Hifumi (7 NHK titles) also won both tournaments in 1981. I stand corrected. In the Oi league Maruyama is the only player in the white group with a perfect score after two rounds. In the red group the lead is shared between Goda (who else?) and Fukaura. Finally, in the Kisei the young players drew first blood. Miura beat Nakahara and Yashiki beat Minami to reach the last four. That is all for this week. Habu is getting married on Thursday, so next week Shukan Shogi and my report will be full of wedding bells. Reijer -- Reijer Grimbergen Electrotechnical Laboratory Palcious Tsukuba 302 1-1-4 Umezono 1-24-8 Ninomiya Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken 305 JAPAN 305 JAPAN E-mail: grimberg etl go jp Tel: 0298-59-1606 WWW: http://www.etl.go.jp:8080/etl/suiron/~grimberg Tel: +81-(0)298-54-5080 extension: 67431 Fax: +81-(0)298-58-5918