Chess in Japan

by Akira Watanabe

I would like to write something about chess in my country, Japan. My country is of course neither strong nor known in the chess world, but I hope the readers will find some thing interesting in my article.

Let me begin with presentation of myself. I'm a FIDE master, rated 2388 in the newest list, and a student in post graduate course. I'm also the current national champion. I have played in two Olympiads (Moscow and Yerevan) and in one zonal tournament, which was held in Yangon in December 1998. In 1994, I went to Mexico to study for one year and it was very important chess experience: I played a lot with local players, much stronger than Japanese players, and also had training with Cuban masters.

In Japan, we have more or less 20 tournaments annually, most of which are played in Tokyo. The most important of them are our Championship, held in May, and Japan Open, which is held in November. The majority of our tournaments is played with short time controls, like 40 moves in 80 minutes, and have no cash prize. One the exception is the Japan League, where time control is 40 moves in 100 minutes (Fischer), as at chess Olympiads, and which has cash prizes. Many foreign players have visited Japan (I refer mainly to amateurs; some GMs have also visited, most recently J. Lautier, whose mother is Japanese). They gave us many lessons and we enjoyed playing against them. For example, IM Domingo Ramos of Philippines, who also played for Japan in 3 Olympiads, helped us a lot to raise our level. The same can be said about FM Mats Andersson, who studied in Japan (now is a professor in Sweden), and won our national championship. I would also like to mention FM Loren Schmidt, from the USA, who also won championship of Japan and played in Olympiad a few times. Some foreign players in Japan are married to Japanese woman, like Mr. Jacques Pineau from France, two-time Champion of Japan himself. Some diplomats played with us too: Mr. Igor Sinelnikov from Russia and Mr. David Powell from Britain.

We don't have strong players, (I'm one of the only two male title-holders), but we have some young players, who seriously study chess. For us, chess books published abroad are very important source of information. For example, every month I have a meeting with my friends to read 'Practical Rook Endings' by Korchnoi. It's a very difficult book to read alone, but our 'party' is climbing that mountain little by little, and the book gives us much pleasure. This learning attitude has a lot to do with our Olympiad coach, IM Alexander Lysenko of Ekaterimberg, Russia. He coached our national team during four Olympiads. His lessons, knowledge about chess and love of the game, all made a strong impression on me. He is a keen student of chess himself, and taught me that chess has many dimensions. Even if we can't find strong opponents to train with, we still can do a lot of work!

Another interesting thing about Japan is that we have a very popular game, which is really similar to chess. It's called Shogi (many Asian countries have their own version of chess, like Xiangqi in China) and some of its top players play western chess too. One of them, Mr. Toshiyuki Moriuchi, played in various tournaments abroad. He played against some strong masters, including GM Yermolinsky and IM Jack Peters, making a draw with the latter. The chess knowledge of Shogi players is limited, but their concentration, discipline and attitude towards the game are really impressive. And given their ability to learn, I think that they will get stronger soon.

Chess is not well known in Japan, but I suppose that many Japanese players play on Internet. I myself have a weekly column on the Internet, with a little help from Mr. Hideyuki Koike, of Oita (a city in the south of Japan) Chess Club. It's a pity that the column is only in Japanese.
I hope that Internet will help to make chess more popular in Japan!