Kazuo Manabe

Kazuo Manabe (真部 一男, Manabe Kazuo, February 16, 1952  – November 24, 2007) is a deceased Japanese professional shogi player, ranked 9-dan.

Promotion history

Manabe's promotion history is as follows:^[1]

• 1967: 6-kyū
• 1973, April 1: 4-dan
• 1976, April 1: 5-dan
• 1978, April 1: 6-dan
• 1980, April 1: 7-dan
• 1988, April 1: 8-dan
• 2007, November 24: Died as an active player
• 2007, November 24: 9-dan (conferred posthumously)

The ...*B-42 "Phantom" Move and the Masuda Special Prize

Manabe is well remembered for a move that he created but didn't play in what would turn out to be his last professional game, on October 30, 2007, against Masayuki Toyoshima in a C2 ranking match. Manabe's health was deteriorating fast by this point. He resigned after the 33rd. move (see Diagram). Later that day he confided on his colleague Hiroshi Kobayashi that he'd come up with the ...*B-42 move at that moment, and that he believed he might have won the game had he played it, but he feared this would've made Toyoshima think hard for a long time and Manabe didn't have enough stamina to endure a longer game.^[2] When interviewed later, Toyoshima agreed that the move would've made him take a good amount of time to reply. Kobayashi didn't understand at the time the meaning of such move, so he discussed it next day with Isao Nakata, and the move started to be discussed around from then on.

Days later, just as a wake was being held on November 27 following Manabe's decease, the same game position was coincidentally arrived at in the C2 ranking match between Yasuaki Murayama and Nobuyuki Ōuchi, and Ōuchi, playing White (gote), played Manabe's ...*B-42. Ōuchi later declared that he didn't know of the move in Manabe's last game, and true enough, it took Murayama over 110 minutes to make his next move. Murayama managed to turn the game around and win, and when Ōuchi was later told the story of Manabe's words he said "I should have won." Kobayashi was amazed at the fact that the move would occur exactly at the time of Manabe's wake, and thought of it as sort of a miracle. This coincidence became a topic of many conversations in the Shogi world, and hence the move started to be called the "splendid, phantom move" (幻の妙手, Maboroshi no myōshu)^[2].

The move was proposed for consideration of the then-upcoming Masuda Special Award, which was granted to Manabe posthumously in 2008^[3].

References

External links

• Japan Shogi Association (in Japanese)