2013-02-09, 22:27 | Link #441 | |
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Join Date: Aug 2007
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"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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2013-02-11, 00:58 | Link #444 | |
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Join Date: Jul 2006
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2013-02-11, 01:57 | Link #445 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
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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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2013-02-11, 03:17 | Link #446 | |
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Join Date: Mar 2011
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Wow, some of the comments are precious.
This one really nails it, though, imo: Quote:
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2013-02-11, 06:29 | Link #447 |
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Join Date: Aug 2007
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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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Last edited by Kirarakim; 2013-02-11 at 09:12. |
2013-02-11, 08:21 | Link #448 |
Lost at Sea
Join Date: Mar 2010
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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 |
2013-02-11, 09:21 | Link #449 | ||
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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:
This is also lovely in how it celebrates both contributions of the past and the ones of the present.
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2013-02-11, 10:59 | Link #450 | |
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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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2013-02-11, 11:11 | Link #451 | |
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Join Date: Aug 2007
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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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Last edited by Kirarakim; 2013-02-11 at 12:40. |
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2013-02-11, 12:07 | Link #452 |
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Join Date: Mar 2011
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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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2013-02-11, 15:28 | Link #455 |
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Virginia, USA
Age: 62
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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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2013-02-11, 15:33 | Link #456 |
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Join Date: Mar 2011
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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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2013-02-11, 16:55 | Link #457 | |
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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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2013-02-11, 17:08 | Link #459 | |
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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.
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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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2013-02-11, 17:56 | Link #460 | |
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Last edited by Arya; 2013-02-11 at 18:06. |
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Tags |
cards, josei, karuta, sports |
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