Ancient classic game really worth a try

So the past two weeks I have shared insights into the great game of Shogi by sharing the stories of former Canadian champion Colin Ng.

So this time around I thought it time to take a more in-depth look at the game of Shogi itself, not that a short article here can truly cover a game with a history dating back centuries.

“The earliest predecessor of the game, Chaturanga, originated in India in the 6th century, and sometime in the 10th to 12th centuries Xiangqi (Chinese chess) was brought to Japan where it spawned a number of variants. Shogi in its present form was played as early as the 16th century, while a direct ancestor without the “drop rule” was recorded from 1210 in a historical document Nich-reki, which is an edited copy of Sh-ch-reki and Kaich-reki from the late Heian period (c. 1120),” details Wikipedia.

The material I could find suggested is not clear when chess was brought to Japan, but the earliest reverence to Shogi appears to be around 1060, so nearing a thousand years ago.

Think about that for a moment. Would you expect any game that has come out in the last half century to still be around a thousand years in the future?

As it was Shogi was almost lost in Japan.

“After the Second World War, SCAP (occupational government mainly led by US) tried to eliminate all “feudal” factors from Japanese society and Shogi was included in the possible list of items to be banned along with Bushido(philosophy of samurai) and other things,” details Wikipedia. “The reason for banning Shogi for SCAP was its exceptional character as a board game seen in the usage of captured pieces. SCAP insisted that this could lead to the idea of prisoner abuse. But Kozo Masuda, then one of the top professional Shogi players, when summoned to the SCAP headquarters for an investigation, criticized such understanding of Shogi and insisted that it is not Shogi but western chess that potentially contains the idea of prisoner abuse because it just kills the pieces of the opponent while Shogi is rather democratic for giving prisoners the chance to get back into the game. Masuda also said that chess contradicts the ideal of gender equality in western society because the king shields itself behind the queen and runs away. Masuda’s assertion is said to have eventually led to the exemption of Shogi from the list of items to be banned.”

Also of note the closest cousin of Shogi in the Chaturanga family is Makruk of Thailand, a game that has much merit in its own right as a chess game.

Shogi is played on a board composed of rectangles in a grid of 9 ranks (rows) by 9 files (columns). The rectangles are not different colours as in western chess. The board is nearly always rectangular; square boards are uncommon, because the pieces are also roughly rectangular, with one side ‘peaked’ or pointed. The direction of the point determines which player has control of the piece.

Pairs of dots mark the players’ promotion zones, which are different from western chess as most pieces, not just pawns promote.

Pieces which promote are flipped over to show the new piece.

Each player has a set of 20 pieces of slightly different sizes, differentiating the pieces in addition to the markings.

Three ranks are occupied by the opponent’s pieces at setup.

If a pawn or lance is moved to the furthest rank, or a knight is moved to either of the two furthest ranks, that piece must promote (otherwise, it would have no legal move on subsequent turns).

By comparison a silver general is never required to promote, and it is often advantageous to keep a silver general unpromoted. (It is easier, for example, to extract an unpromoted silver from behind enemy lines; whereas a promoted silver, with only one line of retreat, can be easily blocked.)

Perhaps the enduring popularity of Shogi can be attributed to its ‘drop rule’; it was the first chess variant wherein captured pieces could be returned to the board to be used as one’s own. That was one aspect mentioned in the recent articles with Canadian champion Colin Ng.

“David Pritchard credits the drop rule to the practice of 16th century mercenaries who switched loyalties when captured-no doubt as an alternative to execution,”

Captured pieces are retained and brought back into play under the capturing player’s control. “On any turn, instead of moving a piece a player may select a piece in hand and place it unpromoted side up and facing the opposing side-on any empty square. Shogi takes some getting used to, like any good abstract strategy game there is a lot to absorb, and much to explore, but any chess lover should make the effort to give this ancient classic a try.