Overview

• The referee read Nagase Takuya’s sealed move as 4-2 rook at the 9 a.m. restart on Aug. 27 in Tokushima.
• Play continued with Sota Fujii’s 3-1 bishop and Nagase’s 3-3 rook, leaving a difficult middlegame.
• The game opened on Aug. 26 with 2-6 pawn and 8-4 pawn and developed into a bishop-exchange structure that echoed a prior Meijin title game between the same players.
• Referee Toshiyuki Moriuchi noted expectations of a waiting strategy from Fujii and highlighted how Nagase might break it as a key factor.
• Separately, Takumi Ito beat Akihito Hirose in 126 moves to clinch his first Osho-league berth, with his next official game set for Sept. 4 in Singapore against Fujii in the Oza title match.