From: DANERUD MARTIN TELIA COM> Date: 24 dec 1999 Subject: Shogi sets to everyone! Dear shogi friends, Let me spread an idea to all of you how shogi could be better known and more popular in the western world. In 1999 the Swedish Shogi Federation started a cooperation with Toyota. We let a graphic designer make a simple but nice looking=20 shogi set made of pasteboard with a shogi board, a set of detachable shogi pieces, and a set of rules. The pieces display different Toyota car models with a symbol showing how the pieces can be moved. Toyota financed the design and production of one thousand shogi sets of that type. At the opening of a new Toyota Center near Goteborg, Sweden, we started to spread these shogi sets to the public. The sets=20 were sold at a price of ten Swedish kronor each. That is around one euro or one US dollar each. At that occasion 48 sets were sold. Another occasion was the Christmas rush this year where 35 sets were sold in a few hours. The idea of selling the sets cheaply and not giving them away for free is of course that there has to be a certain quality in the purchase process that will inspire the buyer=20 to use the set. That incentive is not as strong in cases when people get = something for free. Thus with a small effort we have spread more=20 than one hundred shogi sets at different occasions. There are TWO important objectives of these actions. The first one is obvious. We want to spread shogi and increase the number of=20 individual members and active players in the Swedish Shogi Federation.=20 The second objective is to spread knowledge of what shogi is=20 (there are also facts about "real" shogi on the paper with the set of=20 rules). Twenty years ago, for instance "sushi" and "sumo" were not well known words to the public in western countries. Today, with=20 sushi restaurants in all major cities and sumo being broadcasted by for instance "Eurosport", those words must be regarded as general knowledge. This is not the case with "shogi". When a caring mother will hear from her child that he or she has taken interest in "shogi", she should at least not fear that the word refers to a dubious religious sect! So, please use this idea or get inspiration to do something = similar! The future will not remember us (the occidental shogi players) for = having found THAT particular tsume variation or made THAT=20 particular mistake in whatever amateur games we will play. If there are to be any future shogi players (I would say at all!) shogi will have to = be=20 better spread among people living outside Japan! Merry Christmas and A Happy New = Year! Dr. Martin Danerud President of the Swedish Shogi = Federation Temporarily appointed president = of FESA =20