George Hodges message to the Yahoo club:

Regarding recent discussions on Tai Kyoku Shogi, it is not correct to think that this game is the latest of the variants by any means. The most recent research in Japan (late last year), summarised in an appendix to my "Ten Shogi Variants" publication, which deals with this variant over some 36 pages, all in diagram form, would seem to indicate a date for Tai Kyoku Shogi of around 1650 (early Edo times).

It is indeed relatively unlikely that promotion was at the 11th rank and this is possibly a typically rash and unjustified assumption made by modern writers, who might not have realised or remembered that in the larger variants, promotion is normally by capture. It is, however, at least possible, that promotion at the Pawn line was indeed the case.

Regrettably, there are a very large number of other currently insoluble difficulties with this variant: Very many of the names of the pieces are now known to be quite wrong; likewise many of the moves of the pieces are also believed to be totally wrong. Consider, for example, that no fewer than 57 pieces, well known from other connected variants, are given with a quite different move! Three ancient sources are now known (as at November 2002), with numerous differences in names and moves; no two of them agree!

Much more research needs to be done if one is ever going to arrive at anything like an historically, reasonably based set of names, moves and rules.

Apparently the board used for this variant was, in actual fact, very much smaller than the normal Shogi dimensions nowadays and therefore, the piece-names needed to be brush-written in extremely small logographs. This is just one aspect that has no doubt led to wrong names. One should bear in mind that many of the kanji employed on these pieces were, even at that time, very obscure names (couldn't be easily read with certainty) and thereby wrong moves were conjectured. For example, in a simple possibility as applied to some pieces: "Is this a vertical whatever (e.g. Tiger) piece? - they move vertically - if not, then it isn't and it doesn't - so what is it and how does it move?!!

There is no doubt that very much more research on Tai Kyoku Shogi is needed in Japan, by experts who understand linguistic and Shogi variant historical aspects sufficiently well to make reasoned judgements, before anything worthwhile can hope to emerge with this little board game!

George Hodges, June 19, 2003