Utsubyou Kudan

うつ病九段

“A shogi player develops depression.”

Sengaki Manabu (Yasuda Ken) is a popular professional shogi player who holds the highest rank of 9-dan. In July 2017, he was in the middle of a game that would determine his rank when his brain suddenly froze. He could not focus on the shogi board and images of death swirled in his mind. As the person in charge of the shogi association’s public relations, he was busy responding to scandals that had shaken up the shogi world. At the same time, he was also a supervising director for a movie on shogi. He had no rest as he would play shogi in the intervals between. His older brother Akira (Takahashi Katsumi) who is a psychiatrist, diagnoses his condition as depression and recommends immediate hospitalisation. The doctor in charge orders Sengaki to take a long rest and stop playing shogi in the meantime. Shogi would only hamper his medical treatment as it entails extreme concentration.