From: Patrick Davin <patrick <at> LYRA <dot> VEGA <dot> OR <dot> JP>
Date: 18 mar 1997
Subject: Re: origin of Shogi

Lex writes:
>Recently I saw a mentioning of a book by Koichi Masukawa on the origin of
>Shogi. Unfortunately, the book was in Japanese. Does anyone know if there
>exists a translation of this book in English (or German)?

I seriously doubt it.  It's actually a 2-volume work of cultural history,
entitled "Shogi" I & II (although you won't find it in the shogi section).
I haven't really digested it, most of the contents are pretty dry and boring.
I bought it because I was curious about the shogi variants and it was at the
time only work I knew of that had any info on them.

Translating the whole thing would be a monster effort for a truly microscopic
audience, so I don't think its going to happen.

Briefly, the first volume (1977) describes shogi's travel along "the silk road"
from India.  Masukawa offers lots of evidence supporting the same theory you can
find in H.R.Murray's 1913 book on the history of chess.  Volume II (1985) is
concerned mainly with Shogi's growth and evolution within Japan.