From: =?ISO-2022-JP?B?GyRCPmVCPCEhTTU7ThsoQg==?= PO HARENET OR JP> Date: 24 jan 1996 Subject: Letter from Mr. T. -1- A letter from Monsieur Teste -1- Hi Kawada-san, I from now disclose to you a part of the letter from Monsier Teste who wrote permit me to mention any part of it. He is writing "Tu as aucun droit d'en transfer, couper, traduire en aucune language, la totalite et n'importe quelle partie de mes lettres." C'est vraiement formidable, n'est-ce pas ? I was thinking that Monsieur Teste was an imaginary personality of Paul Valery. But it wasn't. He is a true existence and still alive ! (Original is written in French personally to me, the rest is in Greek. I hope my translation is not so bad. It's not possible to convey you the original as I don't have Greek fonts. I, however can convey what he really wants to mean. Very sorry that I can't show you his letter because lacking of fonts.) Of course you can answer or mention to his words. - quote - Hi Sunny, I am very disheartend, also very surprised to read some of the comments ever raised here. When people say things like, "No language or culture can possibly own the ideas of a game," my response is, well, of course they can. Shogi is the creation of Japanese culture. The "idea" of Shogi are the creations of Japanese language and culture. Without them, there would of course be no Shogi. So of course in the sense that Japanese culture invented Shogi and its traditions, Japanese culture "owns" the game. That's not to say that other countries can't do whatever they like. No one would begrudge them that. But other countries should be receptive to the wishes of the Home Culture of the game; their culture takes precedence over any other. They have the culture, the history, the players, the fans, the knowledge, and so on. Don't be so quick unnecessarily to dismiss all this. When transferring the game of Shogi onto the Internet, and the inter- national community, I think care should be taken to keep the game as close to the original as possible. When a fan asks, "Does this mean that if one million people in the West learned to play Shogi but knew little or nothing of the Japanese tradition, that this would be a failure ?" - In a sense, yes, it would be a tremendous failure. Are sheer numbers all that matter ? But isn't there much more at stake here ? Do fans really not care if the Japanese heritage is erased from Shogi as it is internationalized ? To hell with the history and traditions, we just want more players ! This is a very sad attitude. I hope it's not really true. $B!! (BI never cease to be amazed at how some fans want to mangle Shogi into the image of western chess. They want to keep the same piece names as in chess, same notation, probably even throw away the flat pieces and use chess-type three dimensional pieces. Furthermore they never appear to consider there is anything wrong with obliterating the heritage of the game. Sometimes the "easy" way is not the best way. It's really incredible that so many people keep saying "we have to make it easy." The truth is that Shogi ISN'T easy, and it never will be. It is one of the world's greatest and most complex games ! It takes more effort than many other games, but the rewards you get out out of it will also be that much greater. Part of the charm of Shogi is that it ISN'T western chess. You mentionned that many westerner's prefer using Kanji pieces. Very true. Many western people do not want Shogi PRETEND TO BE western chess, despite the mythical advantages of "making it easier." What is the evidence that using a notation more like western chess bring in more people ? Based on this unproved hypothesis, we are going to throw Shogi's heritage out of the window ? Most people in the world will never come to Shogi. Most people will never come to anything that takes a little effort. We need to be concerned with the types of people who are most likely to come to Shogi and what we can do to accomodate them while retaining Shogi's heritage. As for worrying about the rest of the world, that's naive and irrelevant. As for a new notation system making all English books obsolete: So what ! We are talking about a handful of books. A worthless point. Look at all the old "obsolete" western chess books that used the old descriptive notation. Even people who play only western chess actually need to know several types of notation. . . . cont'd. - unquote - Translated by Space SANO (KFF00705 niftyserve or jp) P.S. One more question to Kawada-san: Have you ever tried to translate the town Ginza into "Silver market" as it's really interpreted like that ? And you truly believe that there'll be less foreigners coming to see around Tokyo just because they can't understand the meaning of Ginza and because the name Ginza is not easy to understand ? Let the Dreams Come True! $B!! (B___________________________________ Mugen System Inc. $B!! (BKAMIMURA Hiroshi E-mail mgn-kam po harenet or jp URL http:www.harenet.or.jp/mugen/ ________________________________________ from Kurashiki,Japan