Ya know, it’s funny how the characters see kiriyama as “gods child”
Because from the perspective of the characters in book, that’s how he seems like, a child genius that blew through everything.
But from the perspective of a reader, whilst I do know that kiriyama is a genius, I don’t really see him as a genius as I would see one in real life.
The authour presents kiriyama as an extremely hard worker, obviously he has talent.
but after his families death and adoption into a disfictional family.
You can see his desperation and despair as he desperately clung onto the Shogi board for survival. As such I see his accomplishments as something he achieved through his strong, desperately desire to live, complicated environment, isolation and hardwork. And many of these things led to his depression.
His grim life never made me think of his shogi career as a “breeze” but like a human being battling through life, holding onto shogi at every moment of his life like his life depends on it.
His shogi career is almost dazzling on paper, but in perspective there’s nothing dazzling about it. Instead. It’s somewhat grim and sad, but also firm and respectable.