From: "J. Andrew Lipscomb" <ewwa <at> CHATTANOOGA <dot> NET>
Date: 26 jun 2001
Subject: Re: J-Chess

> In today's Asahi Newspaper there is an article about 'J-Chess', an attempt
> to make shogi more popular with children and women in Japan, by doing away
> with the Kanji and turning the pieces into cute animals like eagles and
> pandas... Imagine 'Pokemon+shogi'.
> Anyway, if you're interested, the site is: www.j-chess.com
> Apparently you can download a board and pieces (havent seen the website
> yet).
> Any attempt to popularise shogi and make it less 'mysterious' must be
> welcomed, like the Toyota boards that Martin Danerud persuaded Toyota to do
> in Sweden.

The website is in Japanese only.  One thought I had was to drop the second character from each piece
and use only the single character found in the diagram version (with the obvious exceptions of
promoted silver/knight/lance).