VOICES OF JAPAN

Watching Shôgi from Silicon Valley

KÔNO MICHIKAZU I’d like to discuss your fascinating new book Shirikon barê kara shôgi o miru [Watching Shôgi from Silicon Valley], beginning with some remarkable events that occurred within a month or so of its publication. Just before the book came out on April 25, you announced on your blog that anyone who wished was free to translate any part of it in any language and post the translation online. Almost immediately a twenty-one-year-old university student in Tokyo responded, saying, "So, we can translate the whole book into English, right?" and began soliciting collaborators online. In no time, about a dozen people had volunteered, and by May 5, they had finished the first draft of an English translation. All that happened over a period of about two weeks. The translation was posted on the Internet, and now it’s undergoing editing, Wikipedia-style, with the help of some Western volunteers. Around the same time, a similar project was launched to translate it into French, and after the English translation appeared online, some French shôgi enthusiasts joined the project. [Shôgi is a Japanese board game similar to chess.—Ed.]

I was particularly struck by the awesome energy and can-do attitude of the leader of the French translation project, apparently someone in his late twenties with a full-time job. As soon as the English translation was posted, he basically said, "Leave it to me to enlist collaborators for the other languages," and sent out about two hundred e-mails to government agencies, shôgi organizations, and shôgi enthusiasts all over the world. He got initial responses from Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, and Colombia, and now projects to translate the book into Spanish and Polish are underway. And this could be just the beginning of a much bigger chain reaction.

All of this happened in about a month’s time, and all at the initiative of groups that coalesced spontaneously. It strikes me as a development worthy of special mention, since it embodies an important trend in today’s world.

UMEDA MOCHIO On this occasion, at least, things progressed much faster than I could have hoped. I’ve written a lot about the amazing things that can happen when people with common interests and goals, often complete strangers, meet and collaborate online. But this time I was struck anew by the power of the Internet.

"BAZAAR MODEL" OPEN COOPERATION

KÔNO What were your reasons for announcing this free translation policy in advance of the book’s appearance?

UMEDA I’ve been living in Silicon Valley for fifteen years, but especially over the past seven or eight years I’ve also been trying to talk to people in Japan about the evolution of the Internet and the information revolution in general and how they’re transforming society. My Webu shinkaron [Theory of Web Evolution], which came out three years ago, was a compilation of my ideas on the subject. At that time my hope was that all the great new online trends that were unfolding in the English-speaking world would take hold in Japan as well. Unfortunately, the Japanese Internet didn’t really develop in that direction.

One important way in which the Internet has had an impact on society is through the "bazaar model"open collaboration concept. This originated as an approach to software development, but now the meaning extends far beyond that specialty to indicate a whole mode of thinking and working in almost any field. The idea is that by choosing some topic or challenge by which we might hope to improve the world and opening it up to people via the Internet, we can marshal a multitude of intellectual resources and solve problem after problem.

In Japan, however, this trend really hasn’t taken root in a general way, although its application is gradually progressing within certain subcultures. Especially when the topic relates to politics or social change, the conversation tends to degenerate into rancorous squabbling and vicious backbiting, so there’s no room to cultivate all that positive potential of the Internet—I mean the kind of public contribution that’s possible when some embryonic intellectual asset is released online, and a passionate community of kindred spirits coalesces spontaneously to achieve something great, leveraging the "wisdom of crowds." I was feeling frustrated about that, and I was wondering if there was some way I could serve as a guinea pig in an experiment of that sort, but I hadn’t been able to identify a suitable opportunity.

But then, writing this latest book, it suddenly occurred to me. To begin with, the book has no connection with my work as a business consultant. It’s something I wrote purely from the desire to make some sort of contribution to the world of shôgi that I love so much. It was really a selfless labor of love carried out with no thought to my own business or personal profit. Second, I realized that since the population of shôgi devotees is heavily concentrated in Japan, it was unlikely that anyone would consider translating the book and publishing it overseas for profit. Yet at the same time, it struck me as a meaningful and inspiring undertaking to communicate this wonderful aspect of Japanese culture globally, and it seemed to me that such a project might inspire a certain type of person to lend a hand. And then there’s the fact that the skills needed to participate in a translation project are very clear-cut.

In short, I realized that this met all the basic requirements of the kind of open collaborative undertaking that has preoccupied me all this time. That said, I wasn’t really confident of its success. To be honest, I was thinking that with luck we might have a partial English translation completed in six months or a year, and I didn’t have much hope for any other languages. I was frankly amazed by how things turned out. Life is full of interesting surprises.

KÔNO Are all the participants in the translation project complete strangers to you?

UMEDA There are two basic groups. The first consists of people who have been working actively to expand the shôgi community, none of whom I knew previously. The other group consists of young people who have followed my writings ever since my Theory of Web Evolution. They seemed to understand almost by telepathy what I was trying to set in motion, and their response was immediate and positive. That group includes a few people that I’ve met once or twice in Silicon Valley. But generally speaking, the collaborators are people I didn’t know.

I never asked or pressured anyone for help. An important aspect of "bazaar model" open collaboration is that there’s no coercive mechanism to make anyone do anything. It’s crucial that things evolve spontaneously, so I never asked for help from friends or anyone else. The project was posted on the Internet and carried out by people who committed themselves to it of their own free will. It’s tremendously gratifying to see this type of response emerging among Japan’s young people.

KÔNO The twenty-one-year-old who led the English translation project wrote a blog entry titled "Limitations, Hope," in which he summed up the group’s intent in English with the statement, "We want to brighten the now gloomy Japanese web." Explaining himself in Japanese, he wrote, "We want to change it from a negative web that’s about tearing one another down to a positive one that’s about building one another up. What the project to this point has accomplished is building a foundation that might help in some small way to bring a more positive atmosphere to the Internet."

UMEDA I haven’t been so moved by anything I’ve read lately as I was by that. These people are driven by a new value system that makes them realize that they’re doing something whose importance far transcends the fine points of translation. I commend them wholeheartedly.

TWO REVOLUTIONS

KÔNO Let’s move on to the book’s content. I think the title sums up the book’s substance perfectly. You show us two parallel seismic shifts, focusing on Silicon Valley on the one hand and Japanese shôgi on the other—two worlds with little in common superficially. On the one hand, we see the information revolution that’s centered on Silicon Valley, and on the other we see the revolution catalyzed by the shôgi genius Habu Yoshiharu as he penetrated to the game’s most basic principles. I think the big appeal of the book is the way you re-create the intellectual drama behind these two developments while revealing their deeper relationship. You were the ideal intermediary to bring these two worlds together.

UMEDA In the world of shôgi, a true genius appears regularly every ten or fifteen years. In the period after World War II, the line began with Ôyama Yasuharu and Masuda Kôzô, and continued on down through Katô Hifumi, Nakahara Makoto, Yonenaga Kunio, and Tanigawa Kôji. All were brilliant players who combined first-rate talent with strong individuality. Habu was the next genius to appear. But what sets him apart is that, in the process of pursuing excellence in shôgi, he arrived at a certain sweeping, universal way of thinking—a philosophy, if you will.

Before Habu, the world of shôgi was heir to the culture and traditions of old Japan—old in the good sense. There was a clear-cut apprenticeship system, an emphasis on seniority, and an approach embodied in the prevailing belief that life experience was essential to becoming a true master. In essence, it was taken as a given that to become a skilled shôgi player, you had to drink sake and cultivate yourself as an interesting human being. That’s why shôgi analyses and accounts of matches always focused more on what happened off the board than on.

But Habu, while still in his teens, made the unequivocal statement, "Shôgi is a cerebral game." He declared that factors like life experience had absolutely no bearing on skill. He was a little bit like the warlord Oda Nobunaga in his ability to think "outside the box." I think that at this point Habu had seen signs outside the world of shôgi that suggested to him the basic direction in which shôgi was bound to evolve eventually. And he decided to focus all his powers on developing shôgi’s potential as a purely cerebral game. It was the beginning of a solitary revolution.

But there was something about Habu that long puzzled me: What made him begin publishing the results of his shôgi studies when he did? His ten-volume Habu no zunô [Habu’s Brain], the magnum opus of his early twenties, was published over a period of two and a half years, beginning in 1992. He also wrote a series of articles titled "Kawariyuku gendai shôgi" [The Changing Face of Modern Shôgi] for the magazine Shôgi sekai [Shôgi World] over a period of three and a half years, beginning with the July 1997 issue. Both freely reveal things a professional shôgi player would naturally want to keep secret if his top priority was winning. This amazed me.

I never got a clear explanation from Habu, but by reading his writings and getting to know him well, I came to understand why he did it. Simply put, it was the idea that shôgi is a game for two. As Habu put it, shôgi involves a certain amount of reliance on others. It’s not something you can perfect by yourself. You do your best within your own limits, and the rest is up to others. That’s the nature of the game. In other words, you can pioneer as many new frontiers as you like, but if your opponent doesn’t share your values and your vision, there’s no way to revolutionize the game in practice.

In order for Habu to bring more freedom to shôgi and take it to a new level, his opponents had to be people with the same orientation—in addition, of course, to being rivals competing with him for top honors. I imagine that he arrived at the point where he realized that without that, he would miss his opportunity to take the game to a new level. In other words, the realization dawned on him that since shôgi is a two-person pursuit, a single person can never succeed in taking the game to a new level without help from others. As I interpret it, this was the internal motivation behind his decision to make his knowledge accessible to the world.

But the really amazing thing about Habu is that no sooner did he finish his magnum opus Habu’s Brain than he captured all seven major shôgi titles. On the one hand, he invested all his knowledge to that point and presented the results of his latest research and his thoughts on every aspect of shôgi for public consumption. Meanwhile, in the world of professional match play, he kept winning tournaments. So, he succeeded completely at both aims—sharing his knowledge with the world and winning. That’s why he was able to cause a whirlwind of innovation and open the door to the shôgi we know today. It was shortly after that that a group of young professional shôgi players began publishing a whole series of high-quality systematic studies of the game.

THE BIRTH OF MODERN SHÔGI

KÔNO Could you talk a little more specifically about how the game was transformed under Habu’s leadership?

UMEDA From that point on, it wasn’t Habu working solo any more but a movement by a group of players of the same general age, centered on Habu and referred to as the "Habu generation." Until about fifteen years ago, an indispensable feature of shôgi was jôseki, a standardized series of moves. Reliance on standard openings ensured that the first thirty or forty moves of every game proceeded more or less automatically, as if by tacit consent. By contrast, the mainstream approach today is to dispense with this sort of "pre-established harmony" and play with a complete distrust of jôseki, so that the tension of the game begins with the opening. It was the Habu generation that laid the foundation for this style of play.

The declaration of independence that launched this revolution was Habu’s series of articles, "The Changing Face of Modern Shôgi." But his ideas weren’t fully understood or accepted at first. In fact, the work as a whole is a masterpiece that has never been published in book form. But Habu’s style of leadership was such that he took it all in stride and just went ahead without making a fuss. Other players who had previously tried to revolutionize shôgi, such as Masuda Kôzô, deliberately attracted attention to themselves by challenging the ranking masters of the time and putting on highly theatrical performances, and they’ve left behind a wealth of amusing anecdotes. But Habu was not that interested in promoting himself. If people didn’t understand what he was trying to convey, fine—he would just keep doing what he knew he had to do. That was his style.

Habu was someone who was able to convey his message by example, without proselytizing. That’s why he was able to lead a revolution without making a lot of enemies. No one disparages him—not even among the older generation of shôgi players who prize the old traditions. Meanwhile, his own generation supports him, and younger people follow in his footsteps.

Watching Habu operate, I’ve come to believe that he’s a true pioneer for our era in terms of leadership as well. I don’t know how much stress he might be feeling internally, but he strikes me as a model of behavior from the standpoint of living up to abilities that are far beyond the norm in the context of Japanese society. In that sense I consider him the most valuable figure contemporary Japan has produced, and I admire him immensely.

KÔNO How was it possible for this sort of revolutionary change to occur in the world of shôgi? I suppose the fact that Habu kept winning must have helped him win followers by example.

UMEDA As the Habu generation emerged, the people who had ruled under the old style of shôgi stopped winning. So, I think it was fortunate for Habu that he was in a world where you either win or lose, and in the end that’s what it’s all about. In most areas of Japanese society, someone with that kind of potential would probably have been stifled. Another major contributing factor is the system shôgi has developed for attracting gifted players.

KÔNO You mean a system for discovering and nurturing talent?

UMEDA Yes. They identify gifted young people, who join affiliated groups called shôreikai and devote themselves completely to shôgi. They have a very rigorous course of training for aspiring professionals, and those who don’t make it have to begin their whole lives over from scratch. In other words, there’s a very strict meritocracy that pervades shôgi, and that’s one tradition that always stands fast. It’s a world in which the top fifteen or twenty pros stand in stark contrast to everyone else. It’s probably the only corner of Japanese society where children can come into contact with that kind of relentless competition.

SHÔgi finds A NEW APOSTLE

KÔNO I understand that as you got to know Habu better, you became more and more devoted to the world of shôgi. Can you describe that process?

UMEDA At the beginning, my primary interest was in how the Internet could be used to spread the game’s popularity. I had no intention of advising the shôgi community on how to manage things; I just wanted to help out via my own field of expertise. Basically, in the shôgi community, skilled players are the only people who have a voice. So, I was focusing very narrowly on the connection between shôgi and the Internet and offering feedback a little bit at a time.

In the final analysis, the book resulted from a series of events that I could only call miraculous. First, I somehow ended up writing the online match descriptions for the 2008 Kisei title match. Then I traveled to Paris to watch the first game in the Ryûô title match. And before I knew it, I found myself in the midst of these priceless relationships not only with Habu but also with Satô Yasumitsu, Fukaura Kôichi, and Watanabe Akira—in other words, all the big 2008 title holders. So, it was a chain of happenstance that made it possible for me to write the book. From my own perspective, it would be more accurate to say that I was forced to write it, because as I witnessed the distinctive ways in which these four geniuses express themselves through shôgi, I was sucked in until I felt I had no choice but to write about it. In that sense, I see the book as a kind of unique monument for myself, and I know I’ll never write anything like it again.

KÔNO I can see why you might think of it as a miraculous series of events. But listening to you talk about it, it strikes me that, viewed from a broader perspective, the shôgi community might have been in need of a fresh voice in the form of a new writer. Perhaps there was a gradually emerging sense within that community that they needed someone who could break through the conventions of traditional shôgi commentary and express aptly and accurately what was going on in shôgi today. I think that these shôgi players were unconsciously looking for someone who could shine a new light on what they do. And you appeared. They had encountered the person they needed.

In your writing you’ve spoken highly of the pioneering role played by Kaneko Kingorô [1902–90] in shôgi match descriptions and commentary. As a self-styled "armchair shôgi devotee," you credit him with introducing you to the subtleties of shôgi and teaching you how to watch a match. In one of your earlier blog entries you discussed his achievement, while stating your belief that shôgi needed a new apostle comparable to him, someone who could connect with the masses and communicate the special appeal and charisma of shôgi and its players today. But in the end, it seems to me, you got tired of waiting for such a person to emerge and came forth to fulfill that role yourself. I imagine that was inevitable in some sense, given your extraordinary passion for the game. So, it seems to me that your encounter with these master players was a fateful confluence of forces that was bound to catalyze something big the moment it occurred.

UMEDA I really don’t know how this book is characterized, but I personally think of it as literature.

KÔNO So do I. On the one hand, it’s possible to read it as the latest in a series of works by the business consultant Umeda Mochio, beginning with your Theory of Web Evolution. And it can also be taken as a kind of "modern shôgi for the masses" piece. But I personally read it as a great work of literature. One reason is that your sympathy for Habu as a solitary artist of sorts allows you to provide insight into his psyche while presenting his achievement from a completely new perspective. I don’t know much about shôgi, but as I read your book, it became clear to me that shôgi today is a creative endeavor. The way a player strives with all the power in him or her to create new value amid the uncertainty of our time strikes me as no different from the work of an artist. Especially with your use of highly literary language, you’ve written a book that can be read as art criticism of a sort.

UMEDA In that sense I regard it almost as the ultimate statement of my own view of things. I have no confidence that I’ll ever be able to write anything better. I was waiting for an opportunity like this. I have the feeling that my whole life I’ve been preparing as I waited for something like this to come along.

KÔNO Kobayashi Hideo once made the rather brutal comment that critics "boil others into stock in order to express themselves." It seems to me that in the topic of shôgi you came face to face with certain essential themes that had been gestating inside you. That’s the irony of this book. It brings Habu and these other geniuses to life in very vivid and appealing terms, and yet in doing so, it implicitly highlights the lack of those qualities elsewhere and expresses your own beliefs as to why, for example, the kind of innovation that has taken place in shôgi doesn’t occur in other Japanese organizations and communities—which also ties in with the aberrant evolution of the Japanese Internet.

BETWEEN SILICON VALLEY AND JAPAN

UMEDA The atmosphere of the shôgi community in the wake of Habu’s revolution is very reminiscent of Silicon Valley. I’ve been doing business consulting for twenty years now with the basic goal of fusing the culture of Silicon Valley with that of Japan, and to be honest I have a deep sense of failure where that goal is concerned. For example, I had hoped to transplant the kind of Web evolution that’s been occurring on the English-language Internet to Japan, but it didn’t happen. In that and other ways, I’ve been forced to conclude that Japanese society and Silicon Valley are like oil and water. But Habu brought a Silicon Valley sort of mind-set to the world of shôgi without destroying the positive aspects of the old cultural traditions. It represents the best possible fusion of two worlds, and that’s an astonishing achievement. I’ve made all kinds of recommendations to businesses and written a lot over the years in hopes of encouraging that sort of fusion, if only on a very limited level, but I was hardly ever able to bring about any substantial change, and to be honest, I’ve had to deal with the disappointment of knowing that people didn’t necessarily welcome what I was trying to do or view my ideas as particularly important. I think that gives me a deeper understanding of the magnitude of Habu’s achievement.

I’ve devoted myself to these things precisely because I love Japan. Fifteen years ago I relocated to another world I love, Silicon Valley, but even though I established my residence there, I’ve never stopped feeling that I was Japanese, and I’ve lived my life in the belief that I was there for Japan’s sake. But summing up the last fifteen years, I can say that very few people in the Japanese business community or Japanese society in general understood my intent. A moment ago you suggested that those top shôgi professionals were looking for someone like me. In fact, I felt that very strongly at the time, and it was very gratifying to find somewhere where I felt I belonged.

KÔNO What do you think is the biggest obstacle to innovation in sectors other than shôgi?

UMEDA I think it’s the people at the top. It’s a question of how people who were born into an especially favorable environment or with outstanding talents should live the one life they have to live. Perhaps noblesse oblige is putting it too strongly, but it seems to me that life should have a bigger purpose than one’s own security or pleasure. The time comes when people like that have to take some personal risks and lead those under them in a new direction in order to make the world a better place. I think it’s important for people to aim a little higher, to try to "take it to a new level," as Habu would say. But if I said this straight out, I don’t think anyone would listen. Especially today, in the midst of a recession that hit just as people were complaining about the growing gap between rich and poor, the prevailing intellectual climate has stifled any idea of helping the people at the top reach their maximum potential so that they can carry a bigger load and help the rest of us. The vested interests that want to prevent any big changes in society intermesh perfectly with Japanese culture’s inherent tendency to beat down the nail that sticks out, and they’ve created a formidable alliance.

That’s why I’ve gotten the feeling, as someone who’s been trying to communicate with gifted young people, that the Japanese-language space has become very confining. So, that’s probably the source of the irony you were talking about. Still, I’ve found that if I use shôgi as a metaphor, I can speak pretty freely.

KÔNO What do you intend to do next?

UMEDA I want to keep talking directly with young people who are committed to change. I don’t want to overstate the significance or value of this translation project, but things like this are actually happening. I’d like to work with these young people in the capacity of a kind of tutor or mentor. For me, it’s a source of hope.

Translated from an original interview in Japanese. Interviewer Kôno Michikazu is former editor in chief of Chûô Kôron.

© 2009 Japan Echo Inc.