In the beginning of 80′s there were no printed Go books in Russia, but
even nowadays handwritten books still go around, including
the collections of game records of top Japanese masters. These manuscripts included
Fujisawa Hideyuki’s matches and his writings, translated from Japanese
and English. Many times, only a few copies of each book appeared, but
they are very valuable and several generations of Go players in Russia
have studied Go by reading these manuscripts.
Our Go lovers enjoy the Fujisawa’s games for many reasons, but his
unique fuseki ideas are outstanding. Even now, many of our players
still use the High Chinese Fuseki and remember many ideas
they have learned from Fujisawa Hideyuki, Kato Masao and Hane Yasumasa
long time ago. Although they know that some of these ideas may seem
“outdated”, they continue to enjoy using them in their games.
In his days, Fujisawa Hideyuki did not only bring a lot of new ideas to
Go theory, but he also became the professional to be followed. Here in
Russia, chess game is very popular, but it is impossible to remember a case
when master player was able to win a big tournament at the age of 67 as
Fujisawa did in Go. When I teach Go to older players, I often tell
them about Fujisawa and demonstrate that one can enjoy the game at any
age and even show excellent results in tournaments. As Fujisawa often
said, the most important things are searching for new ideas and
playing without fear.
Fujisawa’s death is a great loss for Go lovers around the world. From
the bottoms of our hearts, we would like to thank Fujisawa-sensei for
his games, his books and the knowledge that he has passed on to his
students in Japan and Korea. They have become top players now and they
continue to show us the way of their outstanding Go master!
Igor Grishin, the president of the Go Federation, on behalf of all
Russian Go fans
