Honinbo Retsugen was a Japanese professional go

Go (board game)

Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...

 player

Go players

This page gives an overview of well-known players of the game of Go throughout the ages. The page has been divided into sections based on the era in which the Go players played and the country in which they played. As this was not necessarily their country of birth, a flag of that country precedes...

, and tenth head of the Honinbo house.

Biography

The period of the second half of the eighteenth century, as far as the game of go

Go (board game)

Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...

 in Japan is concerned, is lacking in distinguishing features. It is short on both technical innovation and outstanding individuals. Some authors, for example John Fairbairn, have suggested that in this era the levels in China and in Japan were quite close, though since Japan was strictly closed this can only be argued on comparison of existing game records in very different styles.

Retsugen was on the receiving end of the brilliance of the one player of the era who still has a high reputation, Yasui Senchi. Senchi was a pioneer of the kind of centrally-oriented play later revived and refined as shinfuseki

Shinfuseki

or new opening strategy was the change of attitude to go opening theory that set in strongly in Japan in 1933. It corresponds, a little later, to hypermodern play in chess, with the inversion that shinfuseki thought the center of the board had been unjustly underemphasised.In the 1930s, a group of...

in the 1930s.