Late Edo · Shusaku at seventeen
The ear-reddening move faces four ways while AI calls it a loss
Black 127 landed near tengen. A doctor supposedly read the moment not from the board but from Gennan's reddening ears. KataGo now offers a useful objection: magnificent direction, questionable urgency.
Yasuda Shusaku (Black) vs Inoue Gennan Inseki (White) · 1846.09.11—09.15 · three sessions · Black won by 2 · no komi
A seventeen-year-old 4-dan faces an elite 8-dan
Shusaku stopped in Osaka while returning to Edo. Gennan was nearly fifty and among the strongest active players; Shusaku was seventeen. After an earlier handicap game, they played with Shusaku simply taking Black.
Shusaku had already erred in the taisha joseki. The game's power comes from recovery, not an immaculate opening.
The doctor watched the ears, not the board
The Nihon Ki-in repeats the account that Gennan's ears reddened when the position turned. The observer is commonly identified as a doctor, but the public source does not provide a contemporary diary; this essay therefore labels the scene as transmitted anecdote.
The story explains the name, not the move's objective value.
K11's four directions—and its hidden price
K11 expands upward, supports stones below, reduces White's right-side influence, and looks toward the left. Traditional commentary prizes this compression of the whole board into one move.
KataGo drops Black from about 65.9% and +1.0 to 47.1% and -0.1. It considers C18 far more urgent. Shusaku's eventual two-point win does not prove K11 survives perfect reply.
Tradition sees four-way influence; AI first asks what is urgent
The variation tree preserves K11 beside C18, D10, and N12. Return to the move-126 root, then play each line.
The disagreement is about timing, not beauty: can the whole-board vision wait until the upper-left is secured?
From central vision to local urgency
K11 unifies the board but yields the upper-left initiative.
C18 drew 9,097 visits and secures the urgent corner before returning to the center.
D10 treats the left-center contact directly but remains secondary.
N12 is a low-visit exploratory branch, not an equal recommendation.
Keep the four-way lesson; add one question about order
Shusaku teaches whole-board direction; KataGo teaches that every local issue has a clock.
The classic survives because it can be argued with. K11 becomes a permanent exercise in direction versus urgency.