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The story
Businessman Hiroyuki sparked controversy after posting on X in response to a Nikkei article that described the debut of the first female professional shogi player as breaking a “glass ceiling.” He wrote: “The qualification to become a professional is available to men and women under the same conditions. The reason no woman has ever become a professional until now is that women were weaker than men.” Ninth-dan player Yoshiharu Habu is said to have expressed a similar view in the past. On 5ch, the remark drew a wave of pushback arguing it “simply comes down to there being fewer female players,” while others countered that “there’s a gap that can’t be explained by player numbers alone,” keeping the debate over the real cause of the skill gap in shogi going.
Hiroyuki flatly declares the reason there are zero female professional shogi players is “because women were weaker than men”… fans push back with “it’s because fewer women play shogi”
Businessman Hiroyuki — real name Hiroyuki Nishimura — stirred up controversy by airing his views on shogi on X on October 12.
“Commenting on a Nikkei online edition report that described Tomoka Nishiyama Hakurei’s achievement as the first woman to become a professional shogi player as a ‘glass ceiling,’ Hiroyuki wrote: ‘The qualification to become a professional is available to men and women under the same conditions. The reason no woman has become a professional until now is that women were weaker than men,’ criticizing the Nikkei for ‘declaring there’s a glass ceiling’” (sports newspaper reporter)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Yep, owned.
If it really were just about player numbers, someone at pro-shogi level should easily emerge even from a small pool.
Blaming it all on 'player population' is nothing but a cop-out.
>In sports, it's not at all uncommon for a country with a far smaller player base than others to still land top results.
Like what sport, for example?
In soccer, players from small-but-strong countries mostly end up on rosters of powerhouse clubs anyway.
Shogi is a Japan-only local game to begin with, so the whole thing is basically a 'women's division' situation lol
Japan can't even beat China or Korea at Go lol
In international soccer, Japan's women actually won it all,
while the men always get knocked out in the tournament's very first match 🤣
Yeah, that's right — Japanese men are weaker at Go than Chinese or Korean players.
I'd say the latter is the cause,
and the former is the result.
I'd get it if it were just 'few,' but zero…
Zero, past and present combined — that's the answer right there.
If he didn't, it's just 'that's your opinion (i.e., assumption), bro,' and that's the end of it.
Believe it or not, a 17-year-old Hungarian beauty, a Hungarian grandmaster.
The result was 1 win, 1 loss.
There are amazing women out there too, but a lot of them are young — high schoolers, college students, that age range.
What an idiot, gross — what's 'flat' about any of that?
If women had equal strength to men from the start while mixed in together, they'd never end up stuck competing only against other women in the first place, right?
It's because they're weaker that they end up grouped off playing just among themselves.
If you want to reject that, you need to show solid evidence for why that view is wrong.
Is that so?
Isn't Nishiyama the strongest player from Osaka-Sayama City?
Isn't Fukuma the strongest player from Shimane Prefecture?
So even with the same number of players, fewer women would end up becoming pros than men would.
Maybe women are just too sensible.
Betting your whole life on shogi is kind of crazy, in a way.
Even before turning pro, there's obviously no rule saying women can only face other women.
Women have had a path completely equal to men's — competing mixed in with men on the same track to turning pro — and they still couldn't make it.
'Fewer women players' has nothing to do with it.
It's simply a fact that the number of female players is overwhelmingly smaller.
Sure, there could be all kinds of reasons behind that, but the fact itself leaves no room for denial.
It's a brutally talent-driven world, and bottom-tier pros genuinely don't make money.
That's why everyone quits.
We're talking an annual income of something like 3 million yen.
At that point you think, 'there's no need to keep doing this.'
Plenty of trainees have quit saying 'I'm leaving to become a doctor or some licensed professional instead,' right?
I'm a woman too, and I quit both gaming and piano back in middle school.
With piano, I wanted to keep going if I could get into a music college, but my parents said they couldn't afford that tuition, so I had no choice but to quit.
As for gaming, I just figured if I had time to memorize all that stuff, I'd be better off studying instead.
I don't think it's just about player population, though?
There's the unshakable fact that China and India have hundreds of millions of people and are still weak at soccer lol
There's also stuff like whether players can go pro full-time, or whether the talent-selection system is actually solid.
China's and India's soccer programs are weak on exactly that front.
That alone already means there's a gender skew in talent.
Liking something is a kind of ability in itself.
Habu-sensei can't say this outright given his position, so what can you do.
What determines what a person likes in the first place?
Culture and social atmosphere play a role too.
If a culture just happens to have more male competitors, calling that culture itself 'talent' doesn't hold up.
It's nonsense.
That's pretty rude to the current female pros, isn't it.
That's a pretty forced way to spin it as criticism.
I doubt even today's female pros would deny it, honestly.
If it's a battle of intellect, just let them compete on the same stage.
Exactly.
It's a battle of wits, so there's no gender gap.
Background and Points of Contention
In the shogi world, “professional (kishi)” and “female professional (joryu kishi)” are separate systems. To become a kishi, a player must climb through the Shoreikai training system — open to men and women alike, but with an age limit (promotion to 4th dan is generally expected around age 26). Tomoka Nishiyama, holder of three female-professional titles, reached 3rd dan in the Shoreikai, the highest rank any woman has achieved, but has still not become a full professional. How to interpret this institutional wall is the crux of the disagreement: one side argues “the player pool is too small to produce a strong woman,” while the other insists that “since women can compete under equal conditions and still haven’t produced a result, that reflects a genuine skill gap.” It’s also worth noting that Hiroyuki’s comments weren’t backed by any supporting data — they remain simply his personal opinion.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “Hiroyuki flatly says the reason for zero female shogi pros is ‘they were weaker than men’… fans push back with ‘fewer women play shogi’ — Yoshiharu Habu holds the same view.”
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