Talk:Yoshiharu Habu

Use of the word "Honorary" in "Honorary Titles"

In my opinion, the word "Honorary Title" is not really an accurate translation of the Japanese concepts of "Eisei taitoru" or "Eisei Taitoru hojisha," at least in the context they are being used here. "Honorary" is more commonly used as an English translation of the word "Meiyo", such as in "Honorary Professor" ("Meiyo Kyoujyuu"), etc. "Honorary" titles are quite often given in Shogi, but these are usually given to famous politicians, media personalities, amateur players, etc. but are not really related to actual performance in professional shogi. A much better way to express this Japanese concept would simply be "Lifetime Titles." -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:57, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

The wording "is a disciple of" vs. "studied under"

I think the phrasing "studied under" is much more natural sounding and appropriate than "is a disciple of" in this context. I understand that 師匠 and 弟子 can be translated into English as "master" and "disciple", but I think those are too literal to be used in this context. I think it is much more natural sounding in English to use "teacher" and "student" when referring to games such as Chess, Go and Shogi. The word "disciple" has a very strong meaning, sometimes fanatical, that implies a total devotion of one's self to a certain person, philosophy or a way of life. For example, a disciple of Jesus Christ or a disciple of Marx. However, I believe the relationship between Habu and Futagami was more teacher-student. If you want to discuss this more or ask for the opinions of other native English speakers then leave a message on my talk page. Thanks --- Marchjuly (talk) 16:22, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Rewriting Biography & References

Hi,

I was reading through this article and feel some of the phrasing and citations (references) could be vastly improved. It's pretty involved so I thought I'd post what I'm proposing on Talk first to hear what others think. Here's what I'm suggesting.

Biography

• Early life

  Yoshiharu Habu was born in Tokorozawa, Saitama in 1970 and moved to Hachioji, Tokyo before entering kindergarten. He first encountered shogi during his first year of elementary school, when his classmates taught him how the pieces move. He was so fascinated by the game that his mother entered him in a shogi tournament held at the Hachioji Shogi Club in the summer of 1978. Although he was eliminated during the preliminary rounds with a record of 1 win and 2 losses, Habu's parents began taking him to the shogi club every weekend from October 1978. Habu improved so rapidly at the Hachioji Club that he was promoted to amateur 5-dan in October 1981 at the age of 11.

  During his elementary school days, Habu regularly participated in regional shogi tournaments, mainly for children. At these tournaments, Habu eventually played against several children of the same age who would also become professional players, including Toshiyuki Moriuchi, Yasumitsu Sato and Manabu Senzaki. Those players born in 1970 are now known as the "Habu generation", not just because they were born in the same year, but also due to their outstanding achievements as players.

  In July 1981, Habu qualified to participate in the Amateur Meijin Tournament as the youngest ever representative ever of the Tokyo Suburban Area, and won four tournaments for elementary school children the following August. He expressed his desire to become a professional player and asked advice from Katsuyasu Nakajima, the owner of the Hachioji Shogi Club and a pupil of Tatsuya Futakami. As Futakami's pupil, Habu applied for the Shoreikai and was accepted as an apprentice professional in 1982.

• Shogi master

  Habu became a 4-dan professional in 1985 at the age of 14. He was the third "high school kid professional" in shogi history following Hifumi Kato and Koji Tanigawa. In 1989, at the age of 19, Habu 6-dan won the Ryu-oh championship, defeating Akira Shima who led a 4-person shogi study group Shimaken in which Habu himself took part. This was Habu's first victory in one of the seven major titles and thus he became the youngest titleholder ever at that time. The next year he lost the Ryu-oh title to Tanigawa but four months later, in 1991, Habu won the Kioh championship. Since then he has won at least one of the seven major titles every year as of 2012, and according to custom of the titleholder system he has, therefore, never been referred to by his dan ranking since winning the Ryu-oh championship in 1989.

  Accumulating three wins in major championships (Ryu-oh in 1989, Kioh in 1991 and 1992), Habu actually did qualify for promotion to 9-dan in March 1992, but the existing promotion rules required him to be promoted to 8-dan first and then to wait one year before his next promotion. He was officially promoted to 9-dan on April 1, 1994 .

  In 1992 Habu won the Oza championship defeating Bungo Fukuzaki to hold two titles (Kioh and Oza) simultaneously. In 1996 (February 14 to July 30), Habu achieved the remarkable feat of holding simultaneously all seven major titles (Ryu-oh, Meijin, Kisei, Oi, Oza, Kioh, and Osho).

  In July 2012, Habu won his 81st shogi championship title in the Kisei Championship, becoming 1st on the all-time title-winners list, surpassing the late Yasuharu Oyama who won a total of 80 titles .

Private life

In 1996, Habu married the actress Rie Hatada, who retired from her career after marriage. As of 2012 they have two daughters. He is also one of the best chess players in Japan, with an Elo rating of 2415 (February 2014).

References

External links

• Biography and Interview from The Japan Times Online
• Interview from chessbase.com
• Yoshiharu Habu rating card at FIDE
• Yoshiharu Habu biography at Biogs.com

Thanks in advance - Marchjuly (talk) 02:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Awards, etc.

Habu has won quite a few significant shogi-related awards, etc. which seems important enough to be included in this article. A list of them can be found here. Obviously since the source information are in Japanese, the names of these awards would need to be (roughly) translated, but that's not really a huge problem. This could be easily done using either tables or bulleted lists. - Marchjuly (talk) 11:21, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Books, etc.

Habu has written quite a number of shogi and other books. Although these are almost all in Japanese (he has acted as an adviser for a few English shogi books), it does seem a list of them should be included somewhere in this article simply as an indication of how prolific of a writer he is. If there's going to be a listing for video games, then there should also be one for his written publications. It would be difficult to include every book he's written, but the main ones, such as done on his Japanese Wikipedia page, could be easily listed. Once again, book titles could be roughly translated if needed. - Marchjuly (talk) 11:31, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Winning percentage

Chessbase has just reported on an event that Habu was taking part in. It quotes from this article about his Shogi playing, making reference to winning percentage of 0.723. Would someone please fix that because that's a tiny percentage which I can only put down to an Americanism, seeing it used in US sports. 0.723% means you win less than one game per hundred... Jkmaskell (talk) 12:43, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

That particular bit of information came from a Japanese Shogi Association news update which lists Habu's winning percentage in Japanese as . Winning percentages are often referred to in that manner in Japanese sports so it was probably just added that way to the article. Anyway, I've edited the text and changed the winning percentage to "72.3 percent". -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:24, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

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Titles and other championships

Hi,

I'm not too sure about some of the wording used in this section. The section heading, for example, might work better as Major titles and other tournaments or perhaps Seven major titles and other tournaments or even the simple Tournament titles.

Winning any of the tournaments listed in this section is essentially the same thing as winning a title. The winner of any shogi tournament can be generally be referred to as a titleholder in English so any distinction, if one needs to be made, is between winning one of the 7 Major Titles and winning one of the other tournaments. The difference between the Japanese words titleholder (タイトル保持者, taitoru hojisha) and champion (優勝者, yūshōsha) is much clearer in this context than the same distinction being made in English. Maybe the best thing to do is simply change the section heading to something less descriptive (e.g.,Tournament titles, Titles, Tournament victories, etc.), and then make the distinction within the body of the section itself (e.g., 7 Major Titles and Other). Moreover, I'm not sure if the current wording of Non-title tournaments is best even though most people familiar with professional shogi would probably understand it in the context it is being used.

The other thing I am having problems with is the formatting and wording used for the two tables. Why, for example, is there a Number of titles column in Titles table, but not in Non-title tournaments table? In addition to the reasons I've given above, it does not seem to make much sense to count the number of times a tournament has been won for titles, but not to do the same for non-titles. All of the non-title tournaments listed, except for the Shinjin-Oh, have been won more than once, and are listed as such such on Habu's JSA player profile page. So, I think a column such Number of titles or even better Number of times should be added to the non-titles table

Finally, the last thing is the wording Number of titles itself. Personally, I think Number of times, or No. of times is better. It could even be further shortened to just simply Number or No. I am really interested in hearing what others think on any of the above. Thanks in advance. Marchjuly (talk) 11:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC) There is mention of an eighth "Eio" title in a link but no stats about his holding of this title?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.195.223.187 (talk) 00:11, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

The Eiō title started out as a "regular" tournament, but was only upgraded to major title status in 2017. Habu has never won the tournament in either incarnation, so that's why there's no mention of him doing so.

The only difference in the wording of the two tables is that one says "Number of times overall" and the other says "Number of times"; they probably should say the same, but technically the way major titles (the counter 期 (ki) is used) and other tournaments (the counter 回 (kai) is used) are counted in Japanese is different. For English Wikipedia purposes, however, it probably is sufficient to use "Number of times" for both.

I've been thinking about the section heading for a while, but "titleholder" does have a special meaning when it comes to professional shogi at least in Japanese; the katakana タイトルホルダー (taitoruhorudā) is also sometimes used instead of タイトル保持者 (taitoru hojisha) and clearly only refers to major title holders. Moreover, I'm not quite sure that winners of regular tournaments would be referred to as a title holder in English, even in other sports or competitions. Winning a "title" and winning a "tournament" are quite different in both Japanese and English. Finally, I've also been thinking that it might be better to move this content to the "Shogi professional" section as subsections (one for major titles and one for non-major titles) as well as also moving the promotion history, awards, etc. related to shogi to that section as subsections. Doing so would keep everything related to shogi in one section under various subsections so to speak. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:22, 30 April 2019 (UTC)