An interesting aspect of this deferred variation is that we can push back the date of the earliest occurrence of the Chinese fuseki to the 1933 Oteai. In other words, smack in the middle of the Shin Fuseki period.

This shape was played by Hashimoto Utaro against Mukai Kazuo. It seems to have been a solitary example, even though White won in a fascinating game where Black avoided for a long time approaching the lower left shimari. Hashimoto probably was "adapting to circumstances" here, rather than genuinely experimenting.

In any event, the next example, again a singleton, featured the future foreign minister, Chen Yi, in China in 1951. Chen's opponent was the master Guo Tisheng. Guo naturally

Chen Yi - revolutionary go patron

took White so his version was not quite the first example of the pure 5-move version of the opening - his was the 6-move version, played in response to Chen's sanrensei, so that the game has a strong feel of the still reverberating Shin Fuseki about it.

Chen once famously said of go, "If you do that sort of thing you cannot achieve revolution." It is amusing to ponder whether Guo was attempting to show that you can be revolutionary on the go board. The opening remained within the circle of the Chinese amateurs around Shanghai until the mid 1960s, when they tried it against Japanese professionals in the newly instigated Japan-China goodwill exchanges (in which Chen Yi was naturally prominent).

Even then it was more of a talking point than a fashion, and progress was inevitably blighted by the Cultural Revolution in 1966. But suddenly, in 1968, top Japanese professionals began playing it against each other. Takemiya Masaki also began playing the high version in 1970. Since then, the opening has become one of the most important ever, though the low version still has a big edge - played roughly twice as often as the high version. Kono Rin's comments on the latest variety relate (so far) only to the low version.

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