Watching a Woman Pursue a Professional Shogi Career Somehow Reminded Me of the Joker’s Girlfriend

Recently, I saw news about a woman attempting to enter the world of professional shogi players.

Shogi has a separate system for women known as “women’s professional players.” Meanwhile, the main professional system, whose members are generally referred to simply as “professional players,” is open to both men and women. Yet no woman has ever qualified as one.

Now, the possibility that the first woman may finally do so is attracting attention.

When you think about it, this is strange.

Shogi is not the 100-meter dash.

Physical strength and height have nothing to do with it.

It is a competition in which players sit in chairs and move pieces, so why has there never been a female professional player?

The Theory That Men Are More Common at Both Extremes

One theory that sometimes comes up here is that the difference between men and women may lie not in average intelligence, but in the way it varies.

Even if there is no major difference in average intelligence between the sexes, men may be more widely distributed toward both extremes.

In other words, there may be more exceptionally intelligent men, but also more men at the opposite extreme.

So men may be more likely to produce geniuses, but they can also swing spectacularly far in the other direction.

It is a remarkably inefficient design.

If this theory is correct, it could explain why men predominate in a field like professional shogi, where being “above average in intelligence” is nowhere near enough and extreme talent must be selected from among tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

However, I do not think this theory alone can explain everything.

That is because it reminded me of a strange scene from a movie I once watched.

The Woman Who Suddenly Acts Stupid When the Joker Comes Home

I think it was a Batman-related movie.

A woman who appeared to be the Joker’s girlfriend was reading a difficult-looking book while she was alone.

Then the Joker came home.

She stopped reading and suddenly began acting like a rather unintelligent woman.

My memory of the details is vague, but that particular scene has strangely stayed with me.

The point is that she was not stupid.

She was pretending to be stupid.

It was more convenient for her to behave that way in front of the Joker.

When I saw it, I thought it was a fascinating piece of characterization.

There is the intelligence required to understand a difficult book, and then there is the intelligence required to decide, “It is better not to show my intelligence here.”

Once you include the latter, it becomes hard to say which kind is smarter.

Looking at the University of Tokyo Alone, It Still Seems Strange

A similar example that comes to mind is the University of Tokyo, widely regarded as Japan’s most prestigious university.

The university has long been known for having relatively few female students.

But Japan is no longer in an era when women are not expected to attend university. The share of female students across universities as a whole has been rising.

In fact, women’s universities, which once had a strong presence as institutions “for women,” are now the ones struggling with declining numbers of applicants and other challenges.

And yet, for some reason, women remain underrepresented at the University of Tokyo.

It appears to be a phenomenon specific to that university.

Imagine the perspective of parents living outside Tokyo. This is, of course, pure speculation on my part.

“Do you really need to leave home and move to Tokyo just to aim for the University of Tokyo?”

“There are universities nearby, and I would prefer my daughter to attend one she can commute to from home.”

They may not actively oppose her goal of attending the University of Tokyo, but neither do they enthusiastically support it.

Sensing that atmosphere, the child also chooses a reasonably good school within commuting distance of home.

What is interesting here is that this is not simply a matter of ability.

Having ability and deciding how far to go with that ability are two different things.

Could the Same Thing Be Happening in Shogi?

Perhaps the same thing is happening in shogi.

Becoming a professional player requires investing an enormous amount of time in shogi from childhood.

Children who live outside the major cities must travel on weekends to a shogi hall in Tokyo or Osaka.

Without going there, they cannot play against the strongest rivals in the country.

The question is whether a boy and a girl with equal talent are equally likely to pursue that professional path.

This involves not only innate differences in ability, but also the size of the player pool, how children are raised, the expectations of those around them, and their own choices.

That is why the fact that there has never been a female professional shogi player tells us nothing by itself about the cause.

Just as the Joker’s girlfriend was not “stupid” but was “pretending to be stupid,” the result visible from the outside does not necessarily reflect the ability a person possesses.

In shogi, the strength of someone who sits down at the board can be determined by wins and losses.

The people we cannot assess are those who had the talent but never sat down at the board in the first place.