Itou Soukan III (伊藤宗看, 1706-1761) was one of the strongest Meijin of the Edo period, and the one who led the shogi world during what could be called its golden age. He was the second son of fifth Meijin Itou Souin II; his older brother had been the blazing comet Itou Intatsu. At 17, Soukan III was too young to inherit the title when his father passed away, but the five years of Oohashi Souyo III’s tenure gave him time enough to mature.
Soukan III’s skill was apparent from an early age, first appearing in a Castle game aged 11 and defeating Souyo III accepting a rook handicap, then repeating it for the next three years. By the time he took the office of Meijin, Soukan III had an outstanding 12-1 record in Castle games, including wins with steadily decreasing handicaps over his rival for Meijin, Oohashi Soumin (later 4th head of the Oohashi branch family, Oohashi Souyo IV, who had the impressive achievement of attaining 8-dan in a landscape dominated by the Itou brothers).
The hardest tsumeshogi collection
Given that he became the youngest Meijin at just 23, Soukan III was only able to make his tsumeshogi offering to the shogunate in 1735; but that collection, the Shogi Musou (将棋無双), stands today as the hardest classical tsumeshogi collection to solve, including the 225-move 75th problem. The sheer difficulty of the collection has led would-be solvers to wonder if there were indeed any solution to the problems within, hence its colloquial name “tsumu ya tsumazaru ya” (詰むや詰まざるや), “mate or not mate?”
(Of course, there were solutions; in the 1970s, the original dedicated copy was found in the Cabinet Library, then located in the Imperial Palace; to which was attached Soukan III’s original solutions, putting to rest any debates.)
Difficulty aside, the problems are of extremely high aesthetic quality, including the 12th “mushikake” problem (semekata starts with no pieces on the board) and the famous chasing 30th and 100th problems. and the work stands with his younger brother Itou Kanju’s Shogi Zukou at the pinnacle of tsumeshogi.
Anecdotes
In 1735, the independent player Namura Rima 6-dan (名村立摩) distinguished himself rapidly and came to Meijin Soukan III seeking promotion to 7-dan. Soukan III answered, “You have yet to attain the strength,” to which Rima replied, “Then I shall put all my effort into it,” throwing down the gauntlet. The promotion match was to be two games against the Meijin, the first with a lance handicap, the second with bishop handicap. In an echo of the famous Itou Soukan I - Higaki Koreyasu match 80 years prior, Soukan III lost the lance handicap game against Rima’s own Rima-style strategy, but won the bishop handicap game to deny Rima’s promotion and assert his strength as the iemoto.
In 1737, a dispute arose regarding the order of shogi and go in Castle games. Until that point, the traditional order was for the go game to be played first, followed by the shogi game. Soukan III and other shogi players sought to change this, especially as the shogi iemoto had outstanding leaders in Soukan III and his brothers Oohashi Soukei VIII and Itou Kanju, and among the magistrates, Inoue of Kawachi and Matsudaira of Kii were Soukan III’s disciples. The matter grew in proportion ending in a ruling by Oooka Echizen-no-kami that “The Hon’inbo [the head of the oldest go house] shall have the first seat, and the others by order of succession.”
Itou Soukan III came to be known as “Demon Soukan” (鬼宗看) for his sheer strength in shogi and in tsumeshogi composition. In Castle games as Meijin, he had a 7-5 record and one jishogi in 1731, giving a bishop handicap to Oohashi Soukei VIII. The modern-era professional Habu Yoshiharu praised Soukan III’s play as very modern, saying “it wouldn’t seem out of place as a real game record today.”