11th Honinbo title

3rd Preliminary

In later years, the preliminaries are a knockout match in three stages, and provide half of the players of the League, last year's top half being seeded. This year only Shimamura Toshihiro, the loser of last year's title match, was seeded. In the 3rd preliminary, twelve players played two full rounds of 6 games. Three lost twice and dropped out. Three won twice (Fujisawa Hosai, Hosokawa Senjin, and Sugiuchi Masao) and got a place in the League. The remaining six played one further round (3 games) and the three winners got a place in the League.

League

In the first column the white player, on the top row the black player.

#	player	result	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
1.	Fujisawa Shuko	2-4			B+R		W+R		B+R
2.	Iwamoto Kaoru	3-3	W+1.5			W+3.5		B+4.5
3.	Fujisawa Hosai	4-2		W+8.5			W+R		B+R
4.	Shimamura Toshihiro	5-1	W+2.5		W+R			W+R
5.	Hosokawa Senjin	1-5		B+R		B+R			B+R
6.	Sugiuchi Masao	1-5	B+R		B+R		B+R
7.	Kitani Minoru	5-1		W+2.5		B+10.5		W+R

Sugiuchi Masao, Hosokawa Senjin, and Fujisawa Shuko are demoted.

Challenger Playoff

date	black	white	result	#mv	sgf
1956-05-23,24	Shimamura Toshihiro	Kitani Minoru	B+15.5	224	sgf

11th Honinbo Title

date	black	white	result	#mv	sgf
1956-06-06,07	Shimamura Toshihiro	Takagawa Shukaku	W+6.5	264	sgf
1956-06-17,18	Takagawa Shukaku	Shimamura Toshihiro	W+R	152	sgf
1956-06-28,29	Shimamura Toshihiro	Takagawa Shukaku	B+R	161	sgf
1956-07-09,10	Takagawa Shukaku	Shimamura Toshihiro	B+R	183	sgf
1956-07-19,20	Shimamura Toshihiro	Takagawa Shukaku	W+R	170	sgf
1956-07-31,08-01	Takagawa Shukaku	Shimamura Toshihiro	B+2.5	251	sgf

Takagawa Shukaku won 4-2.