From: DANERUD MARTIN TELIA COM> Date: 26 sep 2002 Subject: Re: Promoting Shogi overseas Dear shogi friends, Thank you Richard for an important translation of the Habu interview. I have followed the discussion starting by Habu saying: Habu: There is a limit to what the Shogi Federation can do to promote shogi, so I think we need the active support of shogi fans overseas. I think that he is correct. What shogi needs outside Japan is a good organisation. Shogi needs local clubs, national federations and in some cases continental federations. Those have to organise tournaments and other shogi events. That is the structure which is necessary for a big number of beginners to join shogi. We need to be attractive and including. That is, there must be no obstacles for those who want to play. If all this does not exist or does not work properly, most of the efforts by Nihon Shogi Renmei or the ISPS are in vain. The spreading of professionals over the world, occasionally translated books and shogi sets in shops risk to be just a cry in the desert. So, the most important thing that all of us, shogi friends outside Japan, can do is to start up regular shogi meetings in our cities, transform them into clubs, attract more and more people to the meetings from schools, chess events, game fairs etc, organise tournaments, bring teams from the local club to the national team championship and so on. I would like to show you one good example. Trollhattan is a Swedish city with 50,000 inhabitants. Robert Soderberg has organised shogi meetings in the city for one and a half years. They have a shogi club, "The Gold Generals", a yearly shogi tournament, Trollhattan Open (this year with 18 participants), bi-weekly shogi meetings at a central department store cafeteria, and a team in the Swedish Shogi Team Championship. In this simple way, shogi is well organised for around ten persons in the framework of the Swedish Shogi Federation. If this good example was reproduced all over Europe, a country like Sweden would proportionally have 1800 shogi players (now 150) and Europe would have 150,000 shogi players (now around 500). Then we would have a fertile soil for the Japanese efforts of planting shogi seeds in the west! So do not ask for help in the first place. Follow in the footsteps of Robert Soderberg (I know that some of you do it already)! Sincerely yours, Dr. Martin Danerud President of FESA and the Swedish Shogi Federation