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Old 2013-02-09, 22:27   Link #441
Kirarakim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SeijiSensei View Post
Perhaps. But the main championships do segregate male and female players. Here's a bit from the Wiki page on competitive karuta:
I can't find anything else about this subject as it applies to karuta through a Google search. Indeed one of the four pages my search returned was this very one!
This is what it says

"Each winner of the men and women division are given the title as the Grand Champion - Meijin for males, and Queen for females. The national championship for high school students is held every July."


We see how it works from Chihayafuru. Yes the Meijin and Queen championships have a separate male & female winner but it's not like men and women don't play together. At the upcoming high school championship for instance they compete together.

I don't know I think I would be more bothered if men & women never get to play together but that is obviously not true. I also don't see where they say one gender is better at Karuta & that is the reason for the separate championships.

edit from this website http://karuta.game.coocan.jp/karuta-e.html



"Today, more than 60 tournaments of Kyogi Karuta are held in Japan every year. There are 5 ranks of players, from the lowest E-class to the top-level A-class.

The players age range from 4 years old to over 80.
Usually men and women play in the same tournament. Only one competition called "Joryu-sen (Women's tournament) is strictly for women.

Also the Meijin (Master) and Queen title match is played by men and women separately. The Meijin and Queen title matches are held on the first or second Saturday of the year at Oumi Jingu Shrine in Shiga prefecture. "
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Old 2013-02-10, 20:38   Link #442
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This episode finished at the best part
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Old 2013-02-11, 00:21   Link #443
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Man these episodes lately so are intense, I love it! Can't believe Porky lost that early too.
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Old 2013-02-11, 00:58   Link #444
HandofFate
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SeijiSensei View Post
I'd have to rewatch season one, but don't the genders compete separately at the professional level like they do in Go and Shougi? Chihaya wants to become "Queen" not "Meijin." It's a big issue in Shion no Ou, too.

As a Westerner, I never understood the rationale for this at all. Since physical strength is largely irrelevant in these games, it seems purely a patriarchal notion about womens' abilities versus mens'. Women don't play professional poker at separate tables, for instance.
I just add that in Pro Go, males and females do compete against eachother.
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Old 2013-02-11, 01:57   Link #445
SeijiSensei
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Here's a long, sometimes informative, sometimes infuriating discussion about whether female Go players are discriminated against: http://senseis.xmp.net/?DiscriminationInGo

One argument for the persistence of women's tournaments is to "protect" them from having to compete against men. By this argument, since female Go players are rare, even the best among them are outmatched by the best male players since the latter come from a much larger talent pool.

Another line of argument concerns traditional Asian family pressures where boys are encouraged to start playing at six or seven while girls are not.

There are also some hormonal explanations, right/left brain theories, and some attempts to compare gender differences in Go to gender differences in science and math performance. Having no professional training in brain science or biochemistry, I can't comment intelligently on these arguments. As a lay person they sound remarkably sexist to me.

One female poster, "gogogirl," specifically attacks the portrayal of women in Hikaru no Go as sexist.
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Old 2013-02-11, 03:17   Link #446
Yume Hanabi
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Wow, some of the comments are precious.

This one really nails it, though, imo:
Quote:
It is highly likely that sex differences in leisure activities are not mainly regulated by genetic disposition. (But among others by gender image of leisure activity, gendered spaces of meeting grounds, disposable time, drop out rates, mobility, online affinity, role models...)
I've seen it happen again and again, sometimes experienced it first hand. For example, women can't go far in MtG tournaments without having to endure sexist remarks and sexual harassment all the time. That's quite a deterrent for many. The way the guys in my shogi club treated me as the sole woman of the group (and I'm not accusing them of bad intentions, it was probably all unconscious on their part) was off-putting and is one of the reason I don't really feel like going back even though I love shogi (I left for a while because of exams and busy schedule).
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Old 2013-02-11, 06:29   Link #447
Kirarakim
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As for Hikaru no Go its lack of female characters is one thing that bothered me about it. I am not really sure if I would call the series sexist for that but its certainly not feminist which Is a bit a shame since it was even written by a woman.

Chihayafuru though doesn't have that issue. The male and female characters are treated equally in the series and we have even seen older women with a love and passion for Karuta. Women have beaten men and men have beaten women in the story.

With the number of competitions in competitive Karuta and only one or two being gender based I don't really think it negates the Empress or Kana's claims that men & women play together equally (and on another note we also see both male & female readers)
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Old 2013-02-11, 08:21   Link #448
hyperborealis
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The title poem is 100, the final poem in the Hyakunin Isshu. Here is Mostow's translation:

The hundred-fold palace!
even in the shinobu-grass
on its old eaves,
I find a past for which
I long yet ever more.

The author is retired emperor Juntoku, who wrote the poem in 1216, while he was still ruling.

Mostow notes that traditionally the poem was interpreted politically, as a lament for the decline of the imperial house, where the present has declined from a more splendid past. But Mostow also says the poem can be read as a reference to the Hyakunin Isshu itself. Here the "hundred-fold palace" refers to the hundred poems of the Hyakunin Isshu, and the "past" for which the poet longs is the poetical history that the 100 Poems itself comprises, seeing that the Hyakunin Isshu is Teika's collection of poetry written in the centuries preceding him.

The poem comes up during the episode in that extraordinary scene where Miyauchi-sensei reflects on how "magical" competitive karuta is: "The more I learn about competitive karuta, / the more magical it seems. / Gender doesn't matter [visual image of Chihaya and Kana] / Size doesn't matter [Taichi vs Retro-kun] / Intelligence and strength don't matter [Nishida and Tsutomu] / Age doesn't matter [older Harada and younger Mochida-san]/" Now Sudo reads the first lines of 100, and Miyauchi is transported back to an aerial view of old Kyoto, the Heian capital where the poems of the Hyakunin Isshu were written. "Every poem sends you back a thousand years. / How many sports are capable of such a feat?"

Unlike other moments where a card will make a point about one player taking a card from another, in the visual that accompanies Sudo's reading of the poem we see all the Mizusawa and Hokuo players in their play, with no idea who wins the card just read. Miyauchi's point--and Suetsugu's, of course--is that karuta brings everyone together, regardless of differences of gender, size, intelligence, strength, and age. That is true due to the nature of the sport, which allows people of these various differences to play equally. But the poetical connection means something additional, which is that everyone is also connected within a shared history and cultural tradition. The magic Suetsugu has is mind refers also to the ineluctably Japanese cultural identity that the characters and the viewers share alike.

This is indeed a magical, marvelous moment--it is no wonder that the episode's title card should accentuate it.
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Last edited by hyperborealis; 2013-02-17 at 09:55. Reason: made a mistake identifying card 33
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Old 2013-02-11, 09:21   Link #449
Kirarakim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hyperborealis View Post
The hundred-fold palace!
even in the shinobu-grass
on its old eaves,
I find a past for which
I long yet ever more.
Love the poem and I don't recall it being one used during Uta Koi. I think it would also appeal to those of us with a love of nostalgia and history.

And also it really does go well with the Empress comments about each card taking you back a thousand years.

Since watching Chihayafuru and Uta Koi, I think not just about the poems but about those who wrote them. We don't know them personally but they are immortalized by those poems. Whatever lives they lead (good or bad) isn't it nice to leave a stamp on the world like that so you will not be forgotten.

Quote:
The eight-petalled cherries
From the Nara capital
of the ancient past
today nine layers thick
have bloomed within your court!

This is also lovely in how it celebrates both contributions of the past and the ones of the present.
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Old 2013-02-11, 10:59   Link #450
HandofFate
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirarakim View Post
As for Hikaru no Go its lack of female characters is one thing that bothered me about it. I am not really sure if I would call the series sexist for that but its certainly not feminist which Is a bit a shame since it was even written by a woman.

Chihayafuru though doesn't have that issue. The male and female characters are treated equally in the series and we have even seen older women with a love and passion for Karuta. Women have beaten men and men have beaten women in the story.

With the number of competitions in competitive Karuta and only one or two being gender based I don't really think it negates the Empress or Kana's claims that men & women play together equally (and on another note we also see both male & female readers)
I say its just being realistic in terms of the actual Go breakdown population. With the huge population difference, I could say it would benefit for having separate female/male divisions just so the women don't feel so 'outnumbered' If there's even enough women to make a decent separate division in ProGo world.

To be honest, I kind of rolled my eyes at the romanticized speech/advertisement of kurata at the end. Its like "yea i get it, these characters really like kurata"
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Old 2013-02-11, 11:11   Link #451
Kirarakim
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HandofFate View Post
I say its just being realistic in terms of the actual Go breakdown population. With the huge population difference, I could say it would benefit for having separate female/male divisions just so the women don't feel so 'outnumbered' If there's even enough women to make a decent separate division in ProGo world.

To be honest, I kind of rolled my eyes at the romanticized speech/advertisement of kurata at the end. Its like "yea i get it, these characters really like kurata"


I don't think the message is "we really like Karuta" from that speech (I mean that is in every episode) but more that look this is a sport that everyone can share and its a sport that we can pass down our cultural & historical heritage.

I am not saying that makes Karuta better than any other sport but the combining of sport & culture it is something special about it, don't you think?

Edit: Taking out most of my comments about Hikaru no Go and Go in general since I think they could veer us too off topic. Just want to say while I love both Hikaru no Go and Chihayafuru and think both series do have their strengths and weaknesses, for me one thing I like more about Chihayafuru is it has a strong presence of both men and women players and young and old players.

Hikaru no Go did do well with the young and old players, but I feel it was lacking in the female character dept. And well there are female players in Japan, so adding someone more prominent wouldn't have been unrealistic http://www.anusha.com/gogirls.htm.
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Old 2013-02-11, 12:07   Link #452
Yume Hanabi
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I'm sorry, this is completely off-topic and nitpicky, but I've seen several people make the mistake several times and it jumps at me every time; it's spelled "karuta", not "kurata" or any other variation. "Karuta", like "carta" - "card". Thank you ^^
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Old 2013-02-11, 14:42   Link #453
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Calling it carta is accurate, it's simply using the original Portuguese spelling of the word.
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Old 2013-02-11, 15:21   Link #454
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I was happy to see Sudo-kun again but it surprised me that he was able to be a reader for the match. This episode and the previous one were the most entertaining, definitely the best anime of this season.
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Old 2013-02-11, 15:28   Link #455
LKK
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^^ Remember, in last week's episode, they said that the match organizers had trouble finding enough readers to have a different reader for every match. I don't know why the tournament organizers made that decision. (I don't think the episode said.) But once the decision was made, I guess that they had to take everyone who was a qualified reader regardless of historical connections to the players in order to meet the minimum number of required readers. Sounds to me like an idea that looked good on paper but didn't pan out quite like the organizers had hoped. It happens.
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Old 2013-02-11, 15:33   Link #456
Yume Hanabi
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I found the bit about the inexperienced reader in ep4 quite interesting. And the tension it created was palpable. It must have been very frustrating to the players.

I like that we're slowly getting more and more insight about readers (to prepare for Kana, no doubt). It's easy to not notice them, when they're actually an essential part of the game.
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Old 2013-02-11, 16:55   Link #457
Arya
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LKK View Post
^^ Remember, in last week's episode, they said that the match organizers had trouble finding enough readers to have a different reader for every match. I don't know why the tournament organizers made that decision. (I don't think the episode said.) But once the decision was made, I guess that they had to take everyone who was a qualified reader regardless of historical connections to the players in order to meet the minimum number of required readers. Sounds to me like an idea that looked good on paper but didn't pan out quite like the organizers had hoped. It happens.
About it I related that decision to the fact that more experienced players could recognize the little differences an official reader unwillingly put reading similar cards (with the same first syllables). Experienced players plays many tournaments, but the number of official readers seems/seemed to be small. So I thought that was a way to make matches fairer. But they didn't take in account the disadvantage inexperienced readers could have caused to experienced players due to their inexperience. So all in all I agree that the idea looked good on paper, but less in practice, even if Sudo did a good job I think.
On the other hand, plot-wise, in that way our Kana-chan will have more chances being a reader in this century. I remember that she noted how long it would have taken her becoming a reader. Don't remember the details, you should be an A-class at least, but I remember that the reader in that episode was an old woman
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Old 2013-02-11, 17:02   Link #458
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Titty monster. God damn it, why is that the first thing I remembered about this episode? >.>

But anyhow it is funny to have the metagame backfire on people.
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Old 2013-02-11, 17:08   Link #459
Blaat
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A reader needs to have at least five years of class A experience IIRC which makes Sudo's appearance as reader rather impressive. This also means that Kana-chan still has a long way to go.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LKK View Post
^^ Remember, in last week's episode, they said that the match organizers had trouble finding enough readers to have a different reader for every match. I don't know why the tournament organizers made that decision. (I don't think the episode said.)
I simply assumed that the organizers had more volunteers so they had the luxury to rotate the readers. While last year they only had one volunteer who was 'forced' to read all the matches. Don't forget they're called professional but they're not getting paid for it, it's a hobby.

I just realised while writing this post that Chihaya had the reader advantage last year, and now the situation is reversed. I guess this even things out.
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Old 2013-02-11, 17:56   Link #460
Arya
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Originally Posted by SeijiSensei View Post
I really wanted to have an animated version of this avatar, but damn Chihaya keeps moving her head up and down. I tried to find the right set of frames where she kept her face still, but gave up and just went with a single still frame. I may try again some time when I have more patience. (I do have the time at the moment, considering that there is two feet of snow plus drifts surrounding my house here in the Boston suburbs.)
I tried to lock her head, that's the best I could do.

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Last edited by Arya; 2013-02-11 at 18:06.
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