With the knowledge of the existence of self-organizing local communities in the late 19th century, we can start to answer the first question I proposed:
- What was the population of Go players in the late 19th century to early 20th century and how did they change over the decades
A first estimation can be done using the ratio comparing known members in regional lists with the giant 5000 players list. By cross-reference the names in them, I estimate the ratio is about 10 to 30 times (hundreds of local members with only dozens in the giant list). Using the ratio of 20, we reach a rough estimate of at least 100,000 people had their names written somewhere in a local member list in the late 19th century (and likely participate in local competition games enough to demonstrate their strength). But more casual players like the poem Omachi Keigetsu probably wasn’t strong enough to be on a list (those around the level of current DDK to low SDK ranks), so the total number of players would probably be at least 2 times or 3 times as many, around 200,000 to 300,000 minimum.
Secondly, we can try to find sources at that time already did some estimation. Below is a paragraph from a very interesting but controversial proposal of a scholar/philosopher Inoue Enryo (井上円了 1858 ~ 1919, a very intriguing character) from a book - 甫水論集 published in 1902 (甫水 is the author’s style nickname he gave himself, 論集 means a collection of his essays)
The proposal was to call for the abolishment of Go games in Japan (囲棋廃止論), due to it was draining precious working hours of the citizens from the author’s point of view (he also called for abolishing tobacco, alcohol, fine clothes, backyards, luxury houses/items, and all recreational activities, where everyone should live a spartan monk-like life). But in order to establish his argument, he has to convince readers that it was taking enough time to begin with. And Inoue Enryo was very cleaver about how to achieve his proposal, and well-aware it won’t be effective just to ban an activity out-right. He proposed the use of tax to reduce the “consumption” (similar to how tobacco and alcohol tax work), and worked out the estimate annual flat property tax from Go games, based on his estimated number of Go boards all across Japan - around 500,000 to 1 million yen annual tax income with 2.5 to 5 yen per board from roughly 200,000 Go board sets (and his number was based on the number of the lowest administrative district units with 2 to 3 Go board sets per district unit). This is a very interesting number since it is about the same magnitude with the previous estimation of players, who had their names written in some membership lists.
However, the number of hundreds of thousands is actually still a pretty low ratio if we compare it to the total population of Japan about 45 million at 1900 (growing from about 35 millions to 55 millions from 1870s to 1920s) of just around 0.5%, or about one out of 200. So does this means Go was still just a fancy pass time hobby for the top 1% even in the 1900s?
In order to answer that, next we need to dive further into what kinds of people own a Go board and ask a very fundamental question - How expansive of a hobby Go was at the time? How much did it cost to own a Go board set? How much did it cost to learn to play Go? And where did people play their games?