History of Shogi - The Development of Medieval Shogi

The Development of Medieval Shogi

In games around the world related to shogi, there have been changes in the rules with the passage of time, such as increasing the abilities of the pieces or their numbers, as winning strategies have been discovered, and the Japanese game of shogi is no exception to this.

Around the 13th century, the game of dai shogi, created by increasing the number of pieces in Heian shogi, was played, and the game of sho shogi, which adds the rook, bishop and drunken elephant from dai shogi to Heian shogi. Around the 15th century, as the rules of dai shogi had become too complicated, they were simplified, creating the game of chu shogi, which is close to the modern game. It is thought that the rules of modern shogi were fixed in the 16th century, when the drunken elephant was removed from the set of pieces. According to Shoshōgi Zushiki (諸象戯図式?), a set of shogi rules published in 1696, during the Ganroku period, it states that the drunken elephant piece was removed from the game of sho shogi by Emperor Go-Nara during the Tenmon period (1532–1555), but whether or not this is true is not clear.

As many as 174 shogi pieces have been excavated from the Ichijōdani Asakura Family Historic Ruins, which are thought to be from the latter half of the 16th century. Most of these pieces are pawns, but there is also one drunken elephant, leading to the hypothesis that in this period variations of shogi with and without the drunken elephant existed side by side.

One point of note in the history of this family of games is that it was during this period that the unique rule in Japanese shogi was developed whereby captured pieces (pieces in the hand) could be returned to the board. It is thought that the rule of pieces in the hand was proposed around the 16th century, but there is also a theory that this rule existed from the time of Heian sho shogi.

In the Edo period, more types of shogi with yet more pieces were proposed: tenjiku shogi, dai dai shogi, maka dai dai shogi, tai shogi (also called "dai shogi", but termed "tai shogi" to avoid confusing the two) and taikyoku shogi. However, it is thought that these forms of shogi were only played to a very limited extent.