Титул Мейдзин — один из женских Го-титулов в современной Японии. Первый приз – 5 100 000 йен. Спонсор – Fuji Evening Newspaper / Nippon Life Insurance Company.
Formerly more fully known as the All-Japan Women's Go Meijin Tournament, this event has always been sponsored by the evening newspaper Yukan Fuji, now joined by NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation).
Winner's prize money is 4.5 million yen. Runner-up gets 900,000 yen.
The current structure is based on the repechage system of the Judan. The main section begins with a 16-player knockout (the Winners' Section), but the losers cross over to a parallel Losers' Section knockout. The level at which they enter depends on the level at which they were knocked out of the Winners' Section. The winners of the two section eventually play off to decide who challenges the title holder in a best-of-three final. With one exception, a player thus drops out only once he has lost two games. The exception is the winner of the Winners' Section. If loses the play off against the winner of the Losers' Section, he gets no second chance.
All those who win two or more games in the main section retain their places the following year. The other eight players drop back to the qualifying stage.
The event is open to all pros from the Nihon Ki-in and the Kansai Ki-in. Amateurs have also been allowed to join in the qualification stage. This was the first event in Japan to allow amateurs and pros to play together.
The final parts of Terms 1 and 2 were run on a four-round Swiss system for eight players, with ties decided by sum of opponents' scores. This was the first time a Swiss had been used in Japan.
Time limits are 5 hours each. Komi is 5.5 points.
This event was preceded briefly by another event also called Women's Meijin, sponsored by NTV in 1973 and 1975. It was a 16-player knockout with time limits of 2 minutes then 30 seconds a move. Komi was 5.5.
Meijin denotes a Master of something esoteric, such as medicine. In go it was famously first applied to Honinbo Sansa by the military ruler Oda Nobunaga at the end of the 16th century. Since then it became the lifetime title of the senior player of the age, and was equivalent to 9-dan. As a woman's title, however, it has no special history beyond this tournament. There are equivalent women's tournaments in Korea (Myeongin) and China (Mingren).
http://gobase.org/games/jp/fem_meijin/