Appendix: Some explanations to the story.and the Go of Torajiro's time

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Yes, some of what I have put in the story DOES contradict the manga and anime.

In the real Go world of Shusaku's era, there was one Meijin Godokoro, who was head of the Godokoro, or State Go Academy (which was ended in 1868 by the Meiji Restoration). The position of Meijin was an appointment of the Shogunate, and was equivalent to 9-Dan (until 1949, you could have only 1 9-Dan at any time. The Meijin title,such as the one Touya Kouyo won on several occasions did not exist until 1959 as the Saikyo title, becoming the Meijin title in 1962).

The 8-Dan ranking was only for the head of one of the four Go Houses (Honinbo, Inoue, Yasui,and Hiyashi), therefore, as Sai mentioned in Chapter 1, he could never be Meijin as he would have to wait for his teacher Shuwa to either die or retire so that he could become head of the Honinbo house.

The main contradiciton in the story is Sai losing to Jowa with Black, by his admission, and stating that stronger players than him even stumbled in chasing the Hand Of God. In real life, Shusaku did lose at least 20 games with black, and had at least 3 jigos (ties,as komi was unknown in this era). However, of survivng full kifu ( a lot are missing, and many that exist are incomplete and not showing a winner), Shusaku had a winning perecentage of over 90%, and an overall winning precentage of 76%.

The only 2 fictional characters are Hikaru and Sai. All others mentioned were real Go players from the Edo era of the 1840's, when Shusaku's 20-year career began.