The greatest game of shogi.

The idea that there might be a greatest game of shogi seems a little silly, but it's fun and nice to exchange ideas about which game might qualify, without being too serious.

My initial idea is that we should choose the best game from the best performance, and as the best performance I nominate Kimura's in the 4th meijin. Because Kimura had successfully defended the title 4-1 and 4-0, in the 2nd and 3rd meijin respectively, there wasn't much excitement about his next defence. So the organisers decided to put the excitement into the qualifying process.

First the fifth to seventh dans played a tournament to find four qualifiers, these were all seventh dans except for Oyama, who was a fifth dan. These four then joined the eighth dans and another tournament was played to find the next set of four qualifiers. Of the first qualifiers, only Ono made it through. He was joined by Hagiwara, Sakaguchi and Hanada. These four proceeded to the next stage of the qualifier in which they each played a best of three match, at half-lance handicap, with Kimura. Kimura eliminated them all at this stage, scoring 8-1, his only loss being against Ono at lance handicap.

This seems to be considered the best game, both by Kimura in his collected games and in 将棋名人戦全集.

What do you think?