James' Answer to Jung (1)

Please excuse the tendency towards rambling - this is a blog, not an academic essay! What I write in these posts will mostly be directed at Jung. I shan't attempt to construct a theodicy. Many greater, wiser and more godly Christians have done so and doubtless will do so. In an case, my faith is not dependent on a theodicy constructed by men and women, but on the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, and on His unfathomable love and the work of the Holy Spirit in bringing us to the Father.

Jung is keen to paint a picture of God as amoral.

As certain as Job is of the evil Yahweh he is equally certain of the good… Yahweh is not split but is an antinomy – a totality of inner opposites – and this is the indispensible condition for his tremendous dynamism, his oimniscience and omnipotence (10).

Just as an aside, this is typical of the style of the work – no attempt is made to defend the assertion that “antinomy is indispendible to omniscience”. Indeed it is difficult to think of a defence of such a claim! One would have thought that God’s radical alterity could suffice (from a human perspective) to ‘explain’ those qualities (though some might think that such an argument would be ‘cheating’). But more importantly, God is simply not dependent on our attempts to justify Him: He is ‘of himself’, He is who He is. And we are dependent on His revelation of Himself for any genuine knowledge of Him. Following Jung, someone might want to argue that divine revelation indeed reveals a God of antinomy, but this is not logically connected to the divine attributes and is certainly not an “indispensible condition” of them.

This pschoanalysis of Yahweh’s personality/character is in some ways the central theme of the work. But the textual evidence is slight. Jung relies on Psalm 89 for his accusations that Yahweh is an oath-breaker (12) and goes on to speculate that Yahweh was about to loosen his matrimonial ties with Israel (44) but was unwilling to admit this to himself and so sought out Job as an unfaithfulness-scapegoat. The many pages devoted to this idea are hardly built on solid ground: the apparently impressive edifice is a sham. Psalm 89 asks many hard questions about present judgement on Israel and the house of David, but is steadfast in its trust in Yahweh. The typology of the Psalm clearly points to the reign of the Messiah, just as the House of David in history was a type of the Messianic throne. And the covenant itself contained provision for disobedience, as the Psalm makes clear (verses 30-32), so a temporary interruption to Davidic continuity should not be much of a surprise, and can be accommodated in a sensible reading of the covenant. Our time is not God’s time – so if He chose to humble and judge Israel for several centuries before restoring the glory of the Davidic line, that would hardly be outside His prerogative!

Of course, since a central plank of Jung’s overall argument is that Yahweh is essentially pre-personal, lacking in self-relection and without consciousness (despite his tremendous power), this begs the question of how there is a ‘he’ to hide anything from ‘himself’. If he is not conscious or reflective how can ‘hiding’ be a meaningful word? Jung has imported a duality of selfhood into his description of Yahweh – the very thing he is trying to exclude with all his insistence on Yahweh’s amorality and unconsciousness.

In passing, note the non sequiturs at the heart of the argument: Yahweh behaves inscrutably and apparently in contradictory fashions, so he must be both good and evil and yet be unconscious of that. Yet unconsciousness does not follow from morally divergent actions, nor is a verdict of moral ambivalence necessary when dealing with the actions of God from a mere human perspective. God might be completely evil, and Jung is in fact happy to accuse Him of this – the plea of unconsciousness is invalid given that he flagrantly violates three of his own commandments (22) – so the question remains as to why he spends so much time trying to categorise Yahweh as unconscious (as opposed to man, who is conscious and thus superior in the Jungian framework) and amoral.

Further, Jung accuses God of being psychologically dependent on human praise and human consciousness (16), which is flatly denied by the Bible, and relates this dependence to a deeper metaphysical question. The character thus revealed fits a person who can only convince himself that he exists through his relation to an object. Such dependence on the object is absolute when the subject is totally lacking in self-reflection and therefore has no insight into himself (14). However, it is far from clear that any subject can exist without a relation to an object. Jung’s whole psychol-analytic system can only be constructed in a analyst-patient duality (not to mention all the rest of the real stuff of life, universe and everything that must already exist for the analyst-subject to relate at all). He appears to rely on a simplistic pseudo-Cartesian understanding of reality, which is totally inadequate. Human beings are already-in-relationship: Jung’s uses “dependence” as a slur, when in fact it is the very ground of consciousness and possibly of matter itself, since all matter is created by the only being for whom it might be possible to subjectify without an object. And yet even this may be an unecessary step. Our God is a glorious Trinity – he is not a speck, a mere subject. He is already-in-relationship, too. A robust trinitarian theology can doubly dispense with Jung’s accusations here.

And finally (for now) the motor for Jung’s Answer to Job is the Biblical narrative of this man’s suffering at the hands of Yahweh and Satan. This raises many questions for faithful believers as well as for sceptics, and I am not suggesting that they can be brushed aside. Several excellent books treat these questions – see, from an evangelical perspective, the recent works of Christopher Ash and Don Carson, and there are many other reflections from across the Christian tradition. Yet Jung brushes aside one of the major ‘orthodox’ explanations, that Yahweh did all this in order to exalt Job, simply because the text does not record that Yahweh ever told Job that this was His reason (24). I regard this possibility as improbable, he says, because it would only have been fair and equitable to Job to explain all this to him. Leaving aside the exemplary shape of the narrative and the possibility that those words were exchanged off-screen, why is Jung so happy to accuse Yahweh of all manner of evil, and yet not be willing to see Him as unfair and inequitable on this point of communication!?

I sometimes wonder whether Jung was fully conscious when he wrote this work… ;-)

customer satisfaction

Wow. Sick computer (hence no blogging for a couple of weeks) and after two short 'phone calls to the vendor/manufacturer and a metre of parcel tape it's back. Four working days. Working better than ever. They picked it up for free and brought it back for free. Now that's what I call a warranty. Thank you Fujitsu-Siemens!

Fourth shogi evening

The fourth Cambridge shogi evening was tough going. I only played two games, both incredibly tense, hard-fought and exhausting. On the plus side I won them both, though we shall have to fit in a fifth if I am to defeat my arch-rival, Mano-san…

J vs. Tanaka-san
1. P76 P34
2. P75 P44
3. P36 S32
4. P74 Px74
5. B55 R92 (this is a terrible square for the rook, White should have seen my cheap opening trap)
6. R38 S43
7. Rx36 P54
8. B28 S72
9. G78 P’73
10. R76 G62
11. N77 P14
12. P’74 Px74
13. N65 P75
14. Rx75

The next bit is not wholly plausible, but I reconstructed this game from memory the following morning and couldn’t remember exactly how White had lost his pawn in hand that meant he had to drop a knight on move 25. So, for the sake of getting to the nice attack, the next couple of moves will have to be a bit spurious

14. … P’74
15. Rx74 B31
16. G58

From here on it is correct.

16. … B64
17. Bx64 Px64
18. Rx64 B’55 (looks very pretty but there were more solid moves)
19. R74 Bx11+
20. B’71 L’73 (looks very solid, but now the incredible sacrifices begin)
21. Bx62+ Kx62
22. G’53 K71
23. Nx73+ Sx73
24. Rx73+ +Bx73
25. L’76 N’74
26. S’63 G52
27. Gx52 Sx52
28. Sx74 +Bx74
29. Lx74 K61 (White still has no pawn in hand, which leaves him pretty defenceless)
30. B’42 G’51 (preventing mate at the cost of returning the sacrificed material)
31. G’72 Rx72
32. Lx72+ Kx72

33. Bx51+ and as White's next move was weak and permitted 34. R'62, mate followed even more quickly than it should have.

the best street name in the world?

Greater Foxes, Fulbourn.

If you've got anything better, I'd like to know about it.

Thirty Two Short Films

About Glen Gould. Beautiful music, intriguing presentation, lots to think about. But the question that hit me most forcefully (I'm ashamed to say) was "Kryten from Red Dwarf: was he a Canadian droid?"

Jung's Answer to Job (1954)

Starting with the book of Job and the Eighty-Ninth Psalm, Carl Jung weaves in and out of Christian salvation history, leaving little bits of his worldview behind him, sometimes cramming it into the heart of the Christian faith and generally casting significant doubt on orthodox theology and theodicy. The bits of the Bible that interest him are Genesis, the Wisdom literature, Job, the Incarnation and Revelation, and he also discusses at length the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which is envisaged (at a deep theological-psychological level) partly as a preparation for Christ's coming.

Like his encounter with the Bible, my encounter with Jung's Answer was not unfruitful, but it was a pretty stiff test. Here are some of the more thought-provoking bits...

Enoch, in his ecstasy, recognizes himself as the Son of Man, or as the Son of God, although neither by birth nor by predestination does he seem to have been chosen for such a role. He experiences that godlike elevation which, in the case of Job, we merely assumed, or rather inferred as the inevitable outcome. Job himself seems to have suspected something of the sort when he declares: "I know that my Vindicator lives." This highly remarkable statement can, under the circumstances, only refer to the benevolent Yahweh. The traditional Christian interpretation of this passage as an anticipation of Christ is correct in so far as Yahweh's benevolent aspect incarnates itself, as its own hypostasis, in the Son of Man, and in so far as the Son of Man proves in Enoch to be a representative of justice and, in Christianity, the justifier of mankind. Furthermore, the Son of Man is pre-existent, and therefore Job could very well appeal to him. Just as Satan plays the role of accuser and slanderer, so Christ, God's other son, plays the role of advocate and defender. (106-7)

Notwithstanding the confused and heterodox Godhead here, Jung has hit on a theme worth investigating further (and I'm sure that someone like James Jordan or Peter Leithart already has, not to mention Milton in Paradise Lost) - but with a proper Christological focus. Christ, God's Son, is the reference point, and Satan, God's other 'son' is the (ANTI)type.

The future indwelling of the Holy Ghost in man amounts to a continuing incarnation of God. Christ, as the begotten son of God and a pre-existing mediator, is a first-born and a divine paradigm which will be followed by further incarnations of the Holy Ghost in the empirical man. But man participates in the darkness of the world, and therefore, with Christ's death, a critical situation arises which might well be a cause for anxiety. When God became man all darkness and evil was carefully kept outside. Enoch's transformation into the Son of Man took place entirely in the realm of light, and to an even greater extent this is true of the incarnation in Christ. It is highly unlikely that the bond between God and man was broken with the death of Christ; on the contrary, the continuity of this bond is stressed again and again and is further confirmed by the sending of the Paraclete. But the closer this bond becomes, the closer becomes the danger of a collision with evil... (114-5) [and CJ then goes on to one of his favourite themes, one of the main drivers of the book, the question of why even now God keeps Satan on such a long leash, cf. 86-7.]

It is altogether amazing how little most people reflect on numinous object and attempt to come to terms with them... One always participates for and against, and "absolute objectivity" is more rarely achieved here than anywhere else... If one has no religious beliefs, then one does not like to admit the feeling of deficit, but prates loudly about one's liberal-mindedness and pats oneself on the back for the noble frankness of one's agnosticism. From this standpoint it is hardly possible to admit the numinosity of the religious object, and yet its very numinosity is just as great a hindrance to critical thinking, because the unpleasant possibility might then arise that one's faith in enlightenment of agnosticism would be shaken... Enlightenment operates with an inadequate rationalistic concept of truth and points triumphantly to the fact that beliefs such as the virgin birth, divine filiation, the resurrection of the dead, transubstantiation, etc., are all moonshine. Agnosticism maintains that it does not possess any knowledge of God or of anything metaphysical, overlooking the fact that one never possesses a metaphysical belief but is possessed by it. Both are possessed by reason, which represents the supreme arbiter who cannot be argued with. But who or what is this "reason" and why should it be supreme? Is not something that has real existence for us an authority superior to any rational judgement, as has been shown over and over again in the history of the human mind? (148-9)

First published as Antwort auf Hiob (Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1952).

from a generous and observant reader

Carlos Bernard (Tony Almeida in 24) is left-handed.

And let me just confess that I find 24 surprisingly compelling. Having watched serieses 1-5 on DVD in big chunks over the last couple of years (the Jacobean first series is clearly superior to its Machiavellian sucessors) we are now attempting to watch it week by week, courtesy of Adam and Laura's SkyOne plus video. Not having a TV ourselves means that even the box becomes a relational tool, on a good day! (For proper analysis of all this relational thinking the best starting place is the work of Michael Schluter and David John Lee, The R-Factor [1993] and The R-Option [2002].)

An interesting feature of 24 is that the country of origin of the various villains is frequently kept hidden, especially when the villains are Muslims (as in serieses 2, 4 and 6). So, we don't hear which Caucasian republic the bombers in season 5 are fighting for, and we don't hear which Middle-Eastern country is first suspected of complicity in the plot, then exonerated through the sacrificial work of its noble secret service agent, in season 2 (in my opinion the one with the most holes, but that's a story for another day...)

The exceptions are noteworthy, and predictable. The shadowy international arms dealers are almost always English. And, as we know, the British/English villain (either character or actor or both) is a staple of the American action genre. But in series 4 we hear very early on that the family terrorist cell are Turkish immigrants. They are not stock Arab/generic Middle Eastern villains. This was, from a Westerner's point of view, an unusual deviation from the programme-makers' underdetermination of origins. But for my Turkish friends it was not only a tremendous insult ("no one in Turkey is watching it now, they have lost a whole nation") it was also just another example of how everyone is out to 'get' Turkey.

There is much to be said on Renaissance stereotyping of "the Turk", and the effect that this has had on European culture subsquently. But that's a story for another day.

Cat gets stuck in a jar

The first pictures have been released of a cat that got its head stuck in a jam jar.
A motorist went to a police station for help after finding the tabby wandering beside a road in Peterborough, with the jar on its head and a mouse trapped inside, millimetres from its nose.A receptionist and three officers pulled and twisted but were unable to release the cat, police said. Eventually the animal freed itself – and the mouse – by smashing the jar on the floor of Thorpe Wood police station."It was like a scene from Tom and Jerry," said a police spokeswoman. "I don't think anyone had ever seen anything like it before. The mouse ran off – it's still running around Thorpe Wood police station somewhere."

(Peterborough Evening Telegraph, Jan 25th)

Oh yes. Hmm, despite being put first in this article the pictures are not really the substance of the story, and are not really that exciting. Only one is actually on display on the Telegraph's website, and it's unfortunately reminiscent of the leaflets handed out by animal rights protesters claiming to show creatures that have been horribly treated in various labs.

A blanket ban on Holocaust denial would be a serious mistake

 argues Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian (Thursday). Of course he's correct, but it was a shame that he listed Poland, Germany and Lithuania as countries with some of the strongest rightwing xenophobic parties in the EU. As Pippa Norris shows, it's Switzerland, Italy and Norway that have the strongest radical right parties (measured by comparing their share of the vote in the period 2000-2004). The other three have negligible far-right influence.

Yeah, I know, Switzerland and Norway aren't in the EU...

Great minds (not mine, I hasten to add)

Never a dull moment on Peter Leithart's blog.

Turns the po-mo jargon to good use;
sees the supremacy of Christ even in the grotesqueries of His enemies;
pithily hits the nub of the issue over assurance among evangelicals;
and here's someone that is going to produce a lot more mileage. What a fascinating thinker he was...

The Last King of Scotland

Writing in yesterday’s Guardian, Vanessa Walters does not like this film. That’s her business, of course, but most of her criticisms are spurious and (dare I speculate?) sound very much post facto.

The film-makers… play to some of the worst stereotypes of corrupt, murderous, incompetent and ridiculous black leaders. I think it’s fair to say that Idi Amin was murderous and (horribly) ridiculous. Clearly those that stood by him and enriched themselves during the violence were corrupt (rather a kind word for such people). Since despite all their violence they could not ultimately hold on to power (let alone govern well enough to endear themselves to the people of Uganda), it is hardly ‘playing to a stereotype’ to call them incompetent. Furthermore, of the three black leaders we actually see in action, one, the Health Minister, is none of the above, but a victim of the General’s paranoia.

Most reviewers have failed to clock the fact that the “white man trying to save ethnic man” from himself is a well-worn caricature. This reviewer has failed to clock that that caricature does not actually appear in the film. Garrigan makes precious little efforts to ‘save’ Amin morally – and since he is a medical doctor it is hardly inappropriate that he should be portrayed as ‘saving’ Amin & family from various medical ailments as the film goes on. The other white people in the film are a doctor and his wife working in the countryside (how dare they try to save the ‘ethnic people’!?) and sinister, smarmy British Government officials in Kigale who are not intersted in saving anyone.

Does Walters not wonder why scary men running around Uganda with AK47s are such an easy stereotype? Perhaps it’s because such men with such weapons did indeed run round said country during Amin’s rule… And another stereotype is the plethora of scantily-clad go-go dancers and other exotic, sexually available women to be bedded by Garrigan. Has she not spotted that there are quite a few films in which the male protagonist sleeps with more than one woman? This is not a piece of racist stereotyping – it’s a sad reflection on promiscuity and the hatred of God’s standards in the world at large. And what’s so exotic about these women? Does Walters mean to suggest that they are exotic because they are black? (What does she expect? How many white Ugandan women are there!?) Sounds like a piece of racist stereotyping to me…

Africa is presented as a place of violence and superstition, ruled by fear. Africa is not presented at all: a fictionalised Uganda is. (Never mind the widespread superstition and violence that actually exist in some places in Africa, as elsewhere in the world…)

White Nicholas Garrigan comes off very badly in the film. He is naïve, cocky, irresponsible, and a sexual predator. There is very little catharsis at the end of the film as a result of anything Garrigan does. He just wants to go home to his mummy. The murder of the black doctor who saves Garrigan provides the limited catharsis on offer. The British Government comes off very badly in the film. Mistreating Amin when he was a nobody, bringing him to power and then trying to have him assassinated without actually standing up to him...

Two of the people I want to see the film with didn’t like it either. But at least they were honest about why they didn’t like it: it was graphic and often unpleasant, and offered no easy answers (being more 'art-house' than 'hollywood'). But it was honest, too, not to mention well-made and well-acted by all and sundry. White or black, man is inhuman to his fellow man on a grand scale and on a petty scale. Witnessing this, even at such a remove, throws light on the urgency and the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Allegedly sent by the Inland Revenue

Dear Mr Addison,

I am writing to you to express our thanks for your more than prompt reply to our latest communication, and also to answer some of the points you raise. I will address them, as ever, in order. Firstly, I must take issue with your description of our last as a "begging letter". It might perhaps more properly be referred to as a "tax demand". This is how we, at the Inland Revenue have always, for reasons of accuracy; traditionally referred to such documents.

Secondly, your frustration at our adding to the "endless stream of crapulent whining and panhandling vomited daily through the letterbox on to the doormat" has been noted. However, whilst I have naturally not seen the other letters to which you refer I would cautiously suggest that their being from "pauper councils, Lombardy pirate banking houses and pissant gas-mongerers" might indicate that your decision to "file them next to the toilet in case of emergencies" is at best a little ill-advised. In common with my own organisation, it is unlikely that the senders of these letters do see you as a "lackwit bumpkin" or, come to that, a "sodding charity". More likely they see you as a citizen of Great Britain, with a responsibility to contribute to the upkeep of the nation as a whole.

Which brings me to my next point. Whilst there may be some spirit of truth in your assertion that the taxes you pay "go to shore up the canker-blighted, toppling folly that is the Public Services", a moment's rudimentary calculation ought to disabuse you of the notion that the government in any way expects you to "stump up for the whole damned party" yourself. The estimates you provide for the Chancellor's disbursement of the funds levied by taxation, whilst colourful, are, in fairness, a little off the mark. Less than you seem to imagine is spent on "junkets for Bunterish lickspittles" and "dancing whores" whilst far more than you have accounted for is allocated to, for example, "that box-ticking façade of a university system."

A couple of technical points arising from direct queries:
1. The reason we don't simply write "Muggins" on the envelope has to do with the vagaries of the postal system;
2. You can rest assured that "sucking the very marrows of those with nothing else to give" has never been considered as a practice because even if the Personal Allowance didn't render it irrelevant, the sheer medicallogistics involved would make it financially unviable.

I trust this has helped. In the meantime, whilst I would not in any way wish to influence your decision one way or the other, I ought to point out that even if you did choose to "give the whole foul jamboree up and go and live in India" you would still owe us the money.

Please forward it by Friday.

Yours Sincerely,
H J Lee
Customer Relations

how right is she?

Pippa Jones' The Radical Right: Voters and Parties in the Electoral Market (Cambridge, 2005) gives a good overview of some European and Commonwealth right wing parties over the last few decades. Nothing earth-shattering, but the reviewers loved it for its poise, detachment and contribution to the puzzle of the radical right's dramatically varying fortunes in similar nations.

[R]emarkably little evidence supports many... popular myths about the reasons for their success, for example the claim that radical right have advanced strongly in societies with rampant unemployment or strong waves of immigration, or that they appeal most strongly to socially disadvantaged sectors of the electorate. Nor... [do] radical right fortunes depend primarily upon where other mainstream center-right and center-left parties locate themselves across the ideological spectrum, or that charismatic leaders are vital to their success. (5)

This is actually pretty clear once you look at the sweep of countries that Norris painstakingly examines. Sweden has negligible radical right influence despite have much higher levels of immigration than Norway, where the radical right have taken 15% of votes in the last two major elections. Britain and Germany, the two European countries with the most immigrants - and don't forget Germany's unemployment - have very weak radical right parties. The media's interest in the BNP's success in Oldham and Nick Griffin's recent trial is out of all proportion to their influence. Meanwhile, Switzerland's radical right party is the major player in the current coalition government with more than 26% of the electorate behind them, and the Swiss are hardly short of a few bob.

Alongside these harder facts of votes cast in given countries and electoral rules (which in some cases conspire to block smaller parties of whatever persuasion from entering the chamber) she sets comparative social survey data about political and policy opinions, social attitudes and the behaviour of the parties' leadership. All fascinating stuff, if a little dry in places.

What seemed very odd to me was her attempts to force Ross Perot and the Reform Party into the same box as racist and anti-immigrant parties. Perot was a quixotic billionaire who contested the US Presidential elections of 1992 and 1996, doing surprisingly well considering the hold the Democrats and Republicans have over there. As far as I remember the media here in the UK never portrayed him as 'radical right', xenophobic or anything of the sort. And even in Norris' book there only seems to be guilt-by-association. Her rhetoric is plain when she comes to discuss those elections. Having pointed out that Perot could be regarded as more of a "center-right... one-man show" and had little in common she continues,

Nevertheless Perot emphasized many classically populist, antiestablishment, and 'outsider' themes in his campaign, adopting folksy appeals and simplistic slogans designed to attract 'the little man', and focusing mainly upon the need to reduce the size of government and levels of taxation, with the anti-NAFTA theme tapped into fears of 'foreigners' stripping away American jobs and companies. (239)

What is the "nevertheless" doing?! If this is the best evidence against Perot, what is he doing in this study? The closest Norris can come to actually accusing him of anything is in relation to NAFTA - which is not exactly something every US Trades Union is loving, either.

Every now and then (eg. p.246) she throws in some asides about how opposing gay marriage or abortion is a sign of being associated with the radical right. This may be me being over-sensitive, or it may demonstrate that even in the driest of sociological texts the presence and biases of the author are never far away.

Something worth doing

...if you're at all interested in Christian ministry (which should cover just about all Christians) is TEAM, Training for East Anglia Ministry. This superb course kept me occupied in the academic year 2006-2007, was particularly helpful in improving my preaching, and full of delightful people to think with, to chat to and play chess with. (The brochure on the link features pictures of the very people I was on the course with, though none of me... I wonder why...)

Accessible to all adults who want to learn. Truly superb value for money. Something to strengthen you and your church and the church.

[NB, this post was actually posted in January 2008, hence the past tense. Not prophecy people, just a scatty blogger, move along, there's nothing to see...]

Shogi 5

Last Sunday morning over drawn-out breakfast, when I should have been doing something helpful before church, I managed to pull this off. My favourite game so far, I think. The relative size of the attacking forces in the endgame (which was reached very quickly indeed) shows that it's not all about strength of numbers but about targeted, focused power.

Computer vs. J

1. P76 P84

2. R68 P85

3. B77 P34

4. P66 P64

5. S38 G(6)52

6. P65 Bx77

7. Nx77 Px65

8. B’55 B’44

9. Bx44 Px44

10. B’15 B’42

11. B26 B33

12. S88 P86

13. Px86 Rx86

14. G78 P64

15. Rx64 P45

16. R69 Rx76

17. R65 R66

18. Rx66 Bx66

19. R’86 Bx57+ (a very high-cost strategy to get a horse right in front of the enemy king)

20. Rx81+ R’89

21. N’69 K42

22. B15 N33

23. P’79 +B66

24. Rx71 S32

25. S’98 P’68 (I have to give up the rook, but now Black’s generals are all in the wrong corner…)

26. Sx89 Px69+

27. Kx69 N’57

28. K59 Nx49+

29. Sx49 P14

30. B26 G’39 (a tiny attack, but surprisingly effective)

31. N’66 G(5)51

32. R’72 P’62

33. Rx73+ K31 (‘an early king escape is worth 8 moves’ – shogi proverb)

34. Bx53+ K22

35. P’67 Gx49

36. Kx49 S’48

37. K38 S39+

38. K28 +B48

39. K18 +Bx47

40. G’28 P15 (the humble, heroic pawn decides the game…)

41. P’52 P16

42. Px51+ Gx29

43. +Px41 Gx28

44. Kx28 G’29

45. K18 Px17+

46. +Bx17 Gx19 (even the return of the cavalry cannot save my silicon friend)

47. Kx19 Lx17=

48. P’18 Lx18+

49. Kx18 P’17

50. K28 N’16

51. Kx17 B’39

52. Kx16 +B25 checkmate