From: Paul Smith ntlworld com> Date: 17 aug 2004 Subject: Re: The myth of the "kanji barrier" Your free subscription is supported by today's sponsor: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Save up to 67% on Omaha Steaks + Get 6 FREE Burgers and a=20 FREE Cutlery Set + Cutting Board! http://click.topica.com/= caacvgpa2i6YsbnuqMaa/OmahaSteaks ------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard wrote: > My first encounter with kanji was > when a Japanese student at a language school where I was teaching > taught me shogi. I remember being struck by the beauty of the Chinese > characters and attracted to the game partly for that reason. I remember also that when I first saw a shogi set I thought that the pieces= were beautiful, and I thought that the game looked intriguing. > > "But I think that the key question is - are there a significant number > > of people who are put off trying shogi because of the kanji? And from > > my personal experience (I could give various examples) I am confident > > that the answer is yes." > My personal experience is the opposite and I am pretty sure the answer > is no. The kanji made shogi more attractive and interesting for me and > I have heard several people say the same. Of course we can never know > for sure how many people have been "put off" because we are not likely >to meet them, but I very much doubt that shogi players in the west > constitute a small minority who were not put off and managed to > overcome this barrier through dogged and persistent efforts. I am surprised that you can be so confident that the answer is no. I have seen many cases of people being put off by the kanji. I don't have time here to recite a long list of examples, so I will describ= e just one particular case. Some years ago I helped to set up some regular shogi meetings in Cambridge. I mentioned this to a chess-playing friend of mine and he was interested so I offered to show him how to play. He really didn't like the kanji pieces (although he thought they looked nice!) so I taught him to play with a Western-style set. He really liked shogi and he turned up to the regular club meeting. I took by westernised set so he coul= d use it. The other shogi players there (none of them Japanese, by the way) refused to play with the westernised set and insisted he try to use the kanji set. He did, but he was very cheesed off and didn't come back again. As far as I know he never played shogi again. It is things like this which make me feel I don't want to waste my time trying to teach people shogi, if others are going to be so unwelcoming and inflexible. I already said that I don't think this is a really difficult barrier which people need "dogged and persistent efforts" to overcome. But some people genuinely are reluctant to try and we can either have them never finding ou= t about shogi, or we can make it easier for them to get started. > Some participants in this discussion seem to > believe that there is a vast untapped shogi population out there in the >west and we only need really nice-looking occident-friendly shogi > pieces to draw them in. Maybe not. But I think we could manage more than 6 in the UK Shogi Championships! I am sure it is possible for shogi to be substantially more popular here than it is now. Why are we lagging so far being Go, Chinese Chess, Othello,= Oware? At MSO Cambridge, we have had more people turning up the last couple= of years to play Bao (the mancala game from East Africa) than Shogi. Given the complexities of the bao rules, and the fact so few people here know the= game, this seems surprising. I'm sure shogi can do better! > Paul Smith believes that more chess players might take up shogi if the sets > were "westernized." But this assumes that chess players would want to > play another type of chess. Why should they? If you have been to the MSO in Alexandra Palace, you would have seen lots o= f chess players playing "Breakthrough" (a game which is clearly a chess variant, I think). Chess players were also trying lots of other games and many junior chess players were playing Go. As I said, I didn't see any significant numbers trying shogi at all. Also, lots of chess players play Bughouse and really like it. Shogi is a bi= t like Bughouse for two players (but much better), isn't it? > The kind of > chess players who get interested in shogi are those who are losing > interest in chess, or who have exceptional intellectual curiosity, or > are exceptionally broadminded. They are a tiny fraction of the small > chess-playing population. The other kind of chess players who are interested in trying other games ar= e junior chess players. They are a large proportion of the chess playing population. As I said, 70,000 of them play in the UK Chess Challenge each year. > In short, kanji are not as difficult as they look. I don't think kanji are difficult. I have studied Mandarin Chinese myself and learned to read and write many characters. It is not always so easy but= not as impossible as many people think. >When I met him recently at the Shogi Renmei, he > bemoaned the decrease in the shogi population in the west. "It's the > kanji," he said, shaking his head. > I would be quite dismayed if this strange view caught on in the west. As I said before, I don't think that learning the kanji really is difficult= . But I do think people are put off trying because they *think* it will be difficult. We can fight against that, and say it should not be this way (which will do= nothing to get more shogi players). Or we can try to deal with it. OK, sorry if I am getting carried away. I know this is just my personal opinion, and I may be wrong. But it makes me sad to have been at MSO events= and seen people (including chess players) queuing up to play Boku, GIPF, Breakthrough and all sorts of other games that are not worth a fraction of what shogi is. And virtually nobody trying shogi. I don't myself have much time to play shogi any more. But it is a wonderful= game and I would love to see more shogi players here in the UK (and in the West generally). I do think we have to be pragmatic in trying to get more people to get as far as playing their first game. Paul Your free subscription is supported by today's sponsor: ------------------------------------------------------------------- Amazing Diet Patch The fastest - Easiest way to lose weight! 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