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The Ear-Reddening Game: Shusaku vs Gennan Inseki (1846)

Published October 17, 2026

The Ear-Reddening Game (mimiaka no ikkyoku, 耳赤の一局) was played in 1846 between Yasuda Shusaku, a 17-year-old 4-dan, and Inoue Gennan Inseki, an 8-dan who headed the Inoue house and was one of the strongest players of the era. (Dan ranks measure strength: the higher the number, the stronger the player.) Shusaku played Black without komi, the points White usually receives to make up for moving second, and won by 2 points after 325 moves.

The name comes from one moment. When Shusaku played his 127th move, a doctor watching the game saw that Gennan's ears had turned red and took it as a sign that the master had been shaken.

It is the best-known game of the Edo period and the best-known game of Shusaku's career. Shusaku is still counted among the greatest players in the history of Go. This article covers the game's background, the famous move, and how a modern engine rates it.

Quick facts

Who were the players?

Shusaku (1829–1862) was born near Onomichi, in today's Hiroshima Prefecture. As a child prodigy he was sent to the Honinbo house in Edo, one of the schools that trained and employed professional players. In 1846 he was 17 and ranked 4-dan: strong, but well below master level. He later became heir to the Honinbo house and won all 19 of his castle games, the annual official games played before the shogun. He died of cholera in 1862, aged 33. Google marked his birthday with a Doodle in 2014.

Gennan Inseki (1798–1859) was head of the Inoue house, one of the four great Go houses of the Edo period. His rank of 8-dan was one step below Meijin (9-dan), the highest rank of the era. In 1846 he was in his late forties and among the strongest players alive.

The handicap game the day before

The two first met in a two-stone handicap game on 10 September 1846, with Shusaku placing two stones on the board before White's first move. Partway through, Gennan stopped the game. According to the traditional account, he saw that he could not win even while giving two stones. He proposed a new game with Shusaku simply taking Black and no handicap. They began the Ear-Reddening Game the next day.

You can also replay the unfinished two-stone game in our library.

The opening: a difficult taisha

The game opened with the taisha in the lower right corner. The taisha is a joseki (an established sequence of corner moves) and was one of the most complicated joseki of the time. Shusaku went wrong in it. His move 25 at N3 is generally considered a mistake, and it left him with a difficult game.

10141519111220131617221821232425AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHJJKKLLMMNNOOPPQQRRSSTT1919181817171616151514141313121211111010998877665544332211
Moves 10–25: the taisha joseki in the lower right. Black 25 at N3 is usually considered an error.

The middle game stayed close. KataGo's estimates for moves 120 to 126 stay within about a point either way, with neither side clearly ahead.

Move 127: the ear-reddening move

By move 127 the board had divided into large areas. Black had a framework (a loose area of potential territory) at the top and a group at the bottom. White had a thick wall on the right and stones on the left. Shusaku played into the empty centre at K11.

127AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHJJKKLLMMNNOOPPQQRRSSTT1919181817171616151514141313121211111010998877665544332211
Black 127 at K11, the ear-reddening move: it works in four directions at once.

The classic explanation is that the stone works in four directions at once:

  1. it expands Black's framework at the top;
  2. it supports Black's stones at the bottom;
  3. it reduces the value of White's thick wall on the right;
  4. it prepares an attack on White's stones on the left.

According to the story, the doctor watching the game saw Gennan's ears flush red at that moment. In the usual telling, Gennan's students believed their teacher was ahead and were surprised when the doctor said he expected Shusaku to win. A calm player's ears, he explained, do not turn red unless something has gone badly wrong.

Nobody can say how much of this happened as told. The story was retold for a long time after the game, and some modern writers treat the red ears as legend rather than history. Still, it fits Shusaku's play: a quiet move, away from any fight, that changed the balance of the whole board.

What KataGo says about move 127

We ran the position before move 127 through KataGo (v1.18.2, network b18c384nbt, 2,000 visits, Japanese rules, no komi) and through KataGo's human-style model set to the year 1846. Visits are the number of positions the engine searches before it answers. The policy figures below are the network's first-instinct probability for each move, before any search.

This matches earlier engine reviews that players posted on the Life in 19x19 forum: move 127 does not appear among the engines' top candidates.

By modern standards, then, the ear-reddening move did not win the game. A scan of the whole game shows a long contest with several swings instead. In a quick 300-visit pass over every fifth move, KataGo has the game roughly even around move 127. Shusaku leads by several points between moves 140 and 200, Gennan is back in front around moves 215–240, and Shusaku retakes the lead from about move 245 and holds it to the end. The final position comes out almost exactly at the actual result: Black by about two points.

That record says more about Shusaku than the legend does. At 17, he recovered from an opening mistake and kept pace with one of the strongest players of the century for more than 300 moves, in a game where the lead changed hands several times.

Final position after 325 moves. Black won by 2 points.

Why the game is still studied

The Ear-Reddening Game remains a staple of Go teaching. Its opening shows the taisha, one of the most complicated joseki ever devised. Its middle game holds one of the best-known examples of a quiet move with whole-board meaning. Its story, a teenager upsetting a master, became part of the legend of Shusaku, whose games professionals still study today.

Keep exploring

Sources

About this article

Researched and drafted with the help of an AI assistant, then checked against the game record and the sources above. Go Kifu's board renderer draws the diagrams directly from the SGF game record. The engine figures come from our own KataGo run with the settings listed above; a different network or a longer search will shift the exact numbers.

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