This is the second book in the Small Encyclopedia series. It's a fuseki reference book, with 13 chapters on different openings. Each chapter is devoted to a choice of the first four or five moves; it then discusses possible continuations (where the next approach move might be, what joseki are likely to arise, and so forth). I've listed it as by the Nihon Kiin, but it also credits "Nihon Kiin Editor Fujisawa Kazunari". Also, the spine says Y27, but it's really Y28.
It's the first such book to be published in English, and I'm happy to see it arrive. It seems like a decent book to me, and I expect that I'll refer to it after my games if I get confused how things went wrong in the early stages. That's the best way to use a book like this: it doesn't cover general theory, so it's not much fun (or, for that matter, much use) to read it straight through, but it should work fine as a reference book. If you're a beginner, don't even consider buying a book like this, and frankly I doubt it will actually be useful unless you're a dan-level player, but if you're in the market for a fuseki reference book, I don't see any reason not to get this one.
Last modified: Sun Aug 10 21:00:03 PDT 2003