was a Japanese professional shogi player, ranked 9-dan.
Manabe's promotion history is as follows:
Manabe is widely remembered for a move he theorized but did not play contesting his last professional game, on October 30, 2007, against Masayuki Toyoshima in a C2 ranking match. Manabe, in poor health, resigned after the 33rd move. Later that day, he confided to his colleague Hiroshi Kobayashi that he had come up with the B-42 move and believed he might have won had he played it. However, he feared this would extend the match against Toyoshima and felt he could not endure a longer game. When he was later interviewed, Toyoshima acknowledged that the move would indeed have required a long time to formulate a response. Kobayashi did not appreciate the move at the time, but his conversations with Isao Nakata about the potential move began to draw public attention.
On November 27, a wake was held for Manabe. Simultaneously, a game position identical to Toyishima's match was reached in the C2 ranking match between Yasuaki Murayama and Nobuyuki à Âuchi. à Âuchi, playing White (gote), played Manabe's ... B-42. à Âuchi would later claim he was not aware of the move's relationship to Manabe's last game. Much as Manabe had predicted, Murayama took over 110 minutes to respond to B-42. Though Murayama ultimately won the match, when à Âuchi was later told about Manabe's game with Toyoshima, he said "I should have won." Amazed at the move's recurrence during Manabe's wake, Kobayashi claimed it was a kind of miracle. The coincidence quickly became a topic of conversation in the Shogi world, and the move soon became known as the "splendid, phantom move" (å¹»ã®å¦ÂæÂÂ, Maboroshi no myà Âshu).
The move was proposed for consideration for the then-upcoming Masuda Special Award, which was granted to Manabe posthumously in 2008.