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(, or (:ɕo̞ːŋi)), also known as Japanese chess or the Generals' Game, is a two-player strategy board game in the same family as Western (international) chess, chaturanga, makruk, shatranj and xiangqi, and is the most popular of a family of chess variants native to Japan. ''Shōgi'' means general's (''shō'' 将) board game (''gi'' 棋). 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was played as early as the 16th century, while a direct ancestor without the "drop rule" was recorded from 1210 in a historical document ''Nichūreki'', which is an edited copy of ''Shōchūreki'' and ''Kaichūreki'' from the late Heian period (c. 1120). According to ''The Chess Variant Pages'' :〔 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. 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. == Equipment == Two players, ''Sente'' 先手 (Black; more literally, ''person with the first move'') and ''Gote'' 後手 (White; ''person with the second move''), play on a board composed of rectangles in a grid of 9 ''ranks'' (rows) by 9 ''files'' (columns). The rectangles are undifferentiated by marking or color. The board is nearly always rectangular; square boards are uncommon. Pairs of dots mark the players' promotion zones. Each player has a set of 20 wedge-shaped pieces of slightly different sizes. Except for the kings, opposing pieces are undifferentiated by marking or color. Pieces face ''forward'' (toward the opponent's side); this shows who controls the piece during play. The pieces from largest (most important) to smallest (least important) are: * 1 king * 1 rook * 1 bishop * 2 gold generals * 2 silver generals * 2 knights * 2 lances * 9 pawns Several of these names were chosen to correspond to their rough equivalents in international chess, and not as literal translations of the Japanese names. Each piece has its name written on its surface in the form of two ''kanji'' (Chinese characters used in Japanese), usually in black ink. On the reverse side of each piece, other than the king and gold general, are one or two other characters, in amateur sets often in a different color (usually red); this side is turned face up during play to indicate that the piece has been promoted. The suggestion that the Japanese characters have deterred Western players from learning shogi has led to "Westernized" or "international" pieces which use iconic symbols instead of characters. Most players soon learn to recognize the characters, however, partially because the traditional pieces are already iconic by size, with more powerful pieces being larger. As a result, Westernized pieces have never become popular. Bilingual pieces with both Japanese characters and English captions have been developed. Following is a table of the pieces with their Japanese representations and English equivalents. The abbreviations are used for game notation and often when referring to the pieces in speech in Japanese. * English speakers sometimes refer to promoted bishops as ''horses'' and promoted rooks as ''dragons'', after their Japanese names, and generally use the Japanese term ''tokin'' for promoted pawns. Silver generals and gold generals are commonly referred to simply as ''silvers'' and ''golds''. The characters inscribed on the reverse sides of the pieces to indicate promotion may be in red ink, and are usually cursive. The characters on the backs of the pieces that promote to gold generals are cursive variants of 金 'gold', becoming more cursive (more abbreviated) as the value of the original piece decreases. These cursive forms have these equivalents in print: 全 for promoted silver, 今 for promoted knight, 仝 for promoted lance, and 个 for promoted pawn (tokin). Another typographic convention has abbreviated versions of the original values, with a reduced number of strokes: 圭 for a promoted knight (桂), 杏 for a promoted lance (香), and the 全 as above for a promoted silver, but と for ''tokin''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shogi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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