From: Pieter Stouten CARBON DMPC COM> Date: 19 mar 1997 Subject: Re: origin of Shogi The following is forwarded on behalf of Sibylle Banaschak uni-muenster de>. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Tue, 18 Mar 1997, Lex ic ac uk> wrote: > Hi all. Apart from being interested in playing several of the oriental > chess games, I am also very much interested in their origin and early > history. 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)? Are there any other recent book on the origin/history of > Shogi/Xiangqi that are accessible to me (i.e. not in Japanese/Chinese)? > > Thanks! > > Lex > I'm presently doing some research on the Chess variants in East Asia (for a PhD dissertation), so I'm interested in the origins and evolution of Xianqi, Changgi and Shogi as well. The only fairly recent book on Xiangqi history in English seems to be by Dennis Leventhal, The Chess of China, Taipei 1978. I haven't seen anything good (and book-sized) apart from that yet. Most books published on Chess in East Asia either deal with introducing the Game or include only shorter (and mostly superficial or misleading) introductions to the history of the game. Among those are e.g David Wurman, Chinesisches Schach-Koreanisches Schach, Frankfurt / Main 1991 and Vladimir Budde Thomas Bandholtz, Chinesisches Schach: Spiel, Mythos, Kultur, Hollfeld 1985. Greetings, Peter