From: "Dr.Eduard Werner" <edi.werner <at> GMX <dot> DE>
Date: 20 mar 2001
Subject: Re: About the name of the pieces

> I completely agree with these statements.  Popularisation (or "marketing")
> of shogi is the agenda #1.  Any factor that's specific to Japanese culture
> should be excluded from Shogi, if it is to be popular worldwide.
> (Whether it should be may be debatable, but I personally would like to see
> that happen.)  I'm not against using local languages at all.  In fact,
> we Japanese can continue using our "local" notations using Kanji.

Please don't forget that the Japanese flair is one of the things that may
make Shogi exotic and therefore attractive for non-Japanese people (like
myself).

> That said, there's one point which seems common on this list but I don't
> think it should be.  It's the naming of squares: '1C' should be '13'.
> The main reason is that it's the way the Japanese use.  We'll need to
> translate Japanese literature (game scores etc) into English.  When we
> do that, translating "1<3inJapanese>" into "13" is straightforward, but
> into "1C" is not.  Well, C=3 or D=4 is actually fine, but I always have
> trouble understanding whether "6h" is 67 or 68.  I guess this use of
> alphabets instead of numbers came from chess, but this is not really
> helping even chess people since the direction is the opposite.
> I don't see any merits using alphabets here.

I do: Other shogi variants exist, played on bigger boards; the most common of
these is Chu. Now where is the square 111 on a chu board? Is it 1-11 or 11-1?
Using a sign between the numbers would already be a deviation from the
Japanese notation for Modern Shogi, and using a character is easier. It would
be nice to be able to use the same notation. Don't forget that also the
Japanese use a digit and a character for denoting squares, only they have
special characters for numbers.

Best

Edi