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The story
The Japan Shogi Association posted on its official X (formerly Twitter) account that, in connection with four-time women’s title holder Nishiyama Tomoka’s admission to Free Class professional status, it had observed personal attacks directed at her, and asked that opinions about the system itself be sent to its official inquiry channel while personal abuse stop. In response, the 5ch live-commentary board erupted into debate over the fairness of the “women’s quota” and the Free Class entrance exam itself. Opinions clashed between “the Association created the system, so the person using it isn’t at fault” and “choosing to take the exam was her own decision,” with many posts also sparring over her competitive record and noting the differing reactions of Yoshiharu Habu and Sota Fujii.
[Regarding Opinions on Admission to Free Class Professional Status]
In connection with four-time women’s title holder Nishiyama Tomoka’s admission to Free Class professional status, we have observed, alongside opinions about the system itself, slander and personal attacks directed at Nishiyama herself.
The Japan Shogi Association welcomes opinions regarding the system. Please submit them via the Japan Shogi Association inquiry page (pro.form-mailer.jp/fms/67225cea10…).
Source: x.com / Original post here
What people said
Cutting her income to less than a tenth is just brutal, come on.
The timing was awful too. This came right after the University of Tokyo president election, when hatred toward "women's quotas" was already running hot — if it had gone Nishiyama first and the Todai president second, things might've played out differently.
99% of people get that. It's the 1% of lunatics who are raging.
But it was this woman's own decision to use the system.
Women's pros tend to get matched against relatively weaker male pros in tournaments anyway, so this was still the least-bad option. Though honestly, adding more pros at all is rough since the Association can barely afford to pay them as it is.
Nah, I'd bet most of them barely pay attention to shogi normally.
If those guys quit the apprentice school, then by win rate they couldn't cut it either. The moment you quit, you're an also-ran — either you lacked the skill to win, or you lacked the resolve to keep going.
I think Habu knows firsthand how brutal sponsor-hunting is and how tight the Association's finances are, so this was a painful call made to keep the Association going. Fujii's probably thinking about nothing but the shogi itself, pure and simple.
Makes me think that if Yonenaga were still alive up in heaven, he'd have pulled this off smoothly. After all, it was Yonenaga who even pushed through Fukuma's apprentice-school challenge in the first place.
Becoming a pro at women's 2-kyu is way too lax, but I guess without that leniency the number of women wouldn't grow.
If you don't climb up within 10 years, you're forced to retire, after all.
https://koubo.jp/article/130952
There's already a "handsome pro shogi player" unit, you know.
Well yeah, but I think this rule got made precisely because Nishiyama is at least fairly strong.
Why would she need to quit? She's the top women's player.
"Fairly strong" is a stretch — if you look at her rating or her career record as a 3-dan in the apprentice school, she'd rank near the bottom among male pros. And lately she's even been losing to those bottom-tier Free Class old guys.
She just beat Shinichi Sato, a Class C2 pro, recently though.
Sato-shin's dropping to Free Class this year anyway — he's at demotion-2 and lost his opening games in a row, basically headed for demotion-3 and out.
It's kind of like a pro entering an amateur tournament to collect the prize money. I mean, the women's circuit itself was basically created for women who couldn't make it to 4-dan in the first place.
No, that's not it. It's just a tournament to decide who's strongest among the women. Does a player who enters the Denou-sen (human-vs-computer tournament) give up their other titles? The argument going around is basically "does she need to keep holding other titles if she can't win there anyway?"
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The system Nishiyama Tomoka used is a special examination that lets a women’s professional be admitted directly to pro status (4-dan). While ordinary newcomers earn 4-dan by fighting their way up through the apprentice school (shoreikai), this route — created by a resolution of the players’ general meeting — allows women who meet certain performance requirements to take the exam instead. As the thread itself notes, this decision was made by the Association’s general meeting, not by Nishiyama personally — she didn’t create the system herself. The timing of the backlash, landing right on the heels of the debate over women’s quotas in the University of Tokyo president election, is also cited as a factor that amplified the pushback more than it otherwise might have been. While the thread leaned toward separating “criticism of the system” from “personal attacks on Nishiyama,” arguments over her playing record also continued throughout, and the mix of level-headed policy debate with emotional personal attacks is worth keeping in mind when reading this thread.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Nandemo Jikkyo G”) thread “Shogi Association: “Stop the Harassment of History’s First Woman Professional!”.”
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