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Why isn't chess popular in Japan?
- BryanLegend 3y agoIt's because Go is a much better game. Shogi is inferior though to Chess because it takes too long to play with the pieces being returnable.
- pmontra 3y agoThat's debatable. Maybe shogi is superior to chess because it's a longer game and pieces can change side. Or maybe Chinese chess are better because they are a faster game with less pieces and more movement. Go is definitely better than all of them though, at least for me, and yet it's less popular than any game of chess in any country.
- zht 3y agoWhat? Go is not less popular than Chess in China or Korea
- pmontra 3y agoAnecdotally I saw many people playing Chinese chess on streets all around China but I never saw anybody playing Go/Weiqi. I saw people playing Mahjong and games of cards (long thin cards.) I don't know which game of chess is popular in Korea, western or Chinese ones? Or is there a Korean variant? About the popularity of Go/Baduk there I was told that it was because of the three years of mandatory military service and the availability of go boards in the barracks.
- zht 3y agowhat I mean is that in China, Chinese chess > go > western chess in popularity Korea has its own variant of Chinese chess, with some interesting rules like the Elephant being allowed to cross the water. Go (Baduk) is absolutely more popular than Chinese/Korean Chess in Korea and definitely more than western Chess
- rtpg 3y agoI don't understand why people compare Go with Chess or Shogi like this. It's not a competition, they're entirely different kinds of games, and for the most part there's loads of people who play both anyways! Real "Trek vs. Wars" nonsense
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- falsandtru 3y agoIt is painful to spend long time chasing in chess after a few pieces in the endgame.
- Pxtl 3y agoBy that logic Xiangqi would be the best because the king is least mobile and so there's basically no chasing.
- kenhwang 3y agoThat's why my dad never got into chess. He said the openings were all really routine/reactive, and the endgame was way too much chasing. To him, it was fairly obvious who was going to win after the midgame if it isn't evenly matched, but you're still spending most of the time repeating the same moves to advance pawns and pretty much waiting for mistakes in the endgame. Xiangqi has a much more tactical opening, longer more varied midgame, and usually the game ends pretty quickly if someone has an advantage coming out of midgame, but otherwise at least the endgame doesn't get repetitive. But also because no matter how far behind you are in the endgame, you're still a threat because of the flying general rule so it doesn't feel as bad being on defensive.
- nwienert 3y agoMost anyone just resigns if they know they're in a losing position, there's no rule forcing you to play it out.
- Pxtl 3y agoStill, that it can get stuck in a moribund state and depends on the losing player to fold for it to be "fun" is a flaw.
- nwienert 3y agoNo, not really. Compared to just about any game I’ve played it rarely gets stuck, and when you are up decisively it usually ends quickly. Also most everyone plays time controls that completely avoid this. Feels like people are reaching for reasons to dislike it here. It’s the most balanced and fun game I’ve found, and these issues ring totally hollow I think to anyone who plays it regularly. There are some other issues you could point out, but they mostly exist entirely in classical time controls, or perhaps if you enjoy a less rigid and punishing game.
- kadoban 3y agoAs much as I enjoy Go and personally consider it a better game, it's not what's holding chess back in Japan. Go isn't _that_ popular there.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoDrops increase the complexity of the game.
- jokoon 3y agoInferior? It's just different. Why do people always put things in hierarchy or in better/worse? Just give your opinion, apples are not better than oranges. I don't even play chess or shoji.
- autocorr 3y agoFor those interested in playing and learning Shogi, take a look over at the great site https://lishogi.org https://lishogi.org -- a fork of LiChess for Shogi that includes real-time and correspondence play, AI opponents, analysis, puzzles and more. One of my favorite variants, Kyoto Shogi, is also available. The website https://pychess.org https://pychess.org also has a ton of interesting and unique variants both traditional (Makruk) and modern (Chennis!).
- theogravity 3y agoThanks for the site. I was able to learn a bit about Shogi, although I don't think I have the capacity to memorize it all at once up front.
- autocorr 3y agoThe kanji on the pieces adds a significant potential barrier. I started with the piece set that had little directional pips on them and different colors to help (it's the twelfth set in the piece set list when you go to the settings gear on Lishogi).
- 29athrowaway 3y ago81dojo and Shogi club 24 are where most people play.
- Mizza 3y agoThis is awesome, thank you. If you want to play chess-meets-shogi, try the 'Crazyhouse' variant on lichess. I'm often fighting anonymous bullet games while waiting for CI pipelines to finish..
- Oreb 3y agoCrazyhouse is a fun game, but I find it inferior to both chess and shogi. Shogi without drop moves would be rather dull. The board is too big, and the pieces too slow-moving. Chess with drop moves (i.e. Crazyhouse) is too chaotic; drops make the already powerful pieces overpowered on such a small board. Chess and shogi are both nicely balanced games, Crazyhouse is not. Another problem with Crazyhouse is that you can’t easily play it with a physical chess set. You can only play online, which some of us find hard to enjoy.
- raincole 3y agoFor pepole who like to witness the actual madness, check Taikyoku Shogi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taikyoku_shogi
- akkartik 3y agoThis linked game is amazing: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1411126 https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1411126
- Cloudef 3y agoThey play shogi, go, and riichi mahjong
- Hamuko 3y agoIs riichi mahjong even that popular?
- ninjin 3y agoAt least in my circles it is common that people play or have played, especially males. I myself play on average two tables or so per day online. Although I certainly should force myself to read up a bit more on strategy.
- Kuraj 3y agoDaina Chiba's Riichi Book I is an excellent free resource for intermediate players.
- makeitdouble 3y agoI don't know for riichi mahjong, but "mahjong" is pretty popular, yes. But the betting aspect puts it probably closer to poker than chess or other games where money is rarely involved.
- offices 3y ago"mahjong" is riichi mahjong in Japan
- raincole 3y agoAbsolutely. According to [1], in Japan, 4.5M people play Mahjong (in Japan you can assume Mahjong means Riichi Mahjong), 5M people play Shogi, and only 1.5M play Go. Interestingly 21M (!) people play family games, which means party video games, e.g. Mario Kart. [1]: https://note.com/hasimo1000year/n/n06989a252aa2 https://note.com/hasimo1000year/n/n06989a252aa2, it's a random Mahjong player's blog, but it quotes the data allegedly from [2] [2]: https://www.jpc-net.jp/research/list/leisure.html https://www.jpc-net.jp/research/list/leisure.html
- Jigsy 3y agoProbably because they have Shogi, which is also fun to play. They also like Go, which I hate. Absolutely love Mahjong, though. (Thanks Yakuza series!)
- sleepybrett 3y agoMy understanding is that Mahjong is more of a rummy style game than a tactical game like a chess/shogi/go so not really applicable here.
- Jigsy 3y agoTrue. I just meant in a general sense. I love playing it.
- Yizahi 3y agoJapanese version is probably very close to the tactical game, with a lot of random of course. Over the course of several full games in a row, strong players are consistently ahead in the ratings even if they are set back by some random big loss in a single game. It is not a chess or go level of course, but also not a simple solitaire with tiles game anymore. The main tactical problem in the riichi is that discarding someone's winning tile makes you responsible for full amount of points, and to avoid that you need to discern what could be such tile just by looking only at the discards and player actions, which is possible for high level players.
- Pxtl 3y agoMy son says the same -- he played through some of the Yakuza games and now he wants a mahjong set.
- RetroTechie 3y ago> They also like Go, which I hate. To each their own... :-) What I like about Go, is its combination of simple rules, contrasted with the rich set of ever-more advanced tactics. And (using handicaps) players of different skill can still enjoy a somewhat-balanced game. There are just a few basic rules (board sizes, placement of stones, groups, freedoms, atari, capture) that are easily explained. Beginners may think it's a simple game then. Wrong! From these follow more basic concepts like eyes, living/dead groups, effect of corners vs. edges vs. center, snapbacks, etc. And then you get into more advanced tactics like netting, semi-connected groups, forcing moves, thin/thick positions, Ko fights, responding to opponent vs. just leaving a position as-is & play elsewhere on the board, etc. Strong players can read ahead further than weaker players, or play more from their intuition ("that position looks weak, let's step in there & take some territory" style). This is what makes it interesting computationally: it's difficult to evaluate positions, to put a number on how good a move is (although experienced players can easily spot a bad move when they see one), or getting a grip on the # of possible board positions. So it could take a lifetime to master Go. AlphaGo has thrown another curveball into this. Other games add complexity through their ruleset, board or # of pieces. Kind of: mastering the rules of the game, vs. mastering the game itself.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- erehweb 3y agoShogi also has the advantage that handicaps are easier, meaning people of different skill levels can play against each other easily.
- rtpg 3y agoOne thing that kinda sucks in Tokyo in particular is a dearth of just chill public spaces. I think Go and Shogi both benefit from incumbent status, with club spaces and the like existing. Chess meetups right now seem to be relegated to city community spaces (glad they exist!). But I was real jealous when I was in Brisbane for a bit and visisted a chess meetup that was just happening in a cafe. Also saw some kids playing in the local library. It's nice for there to be spaces that allow for activities that don't require an exchange of money beyond maybe buying one drink.
- LZ_Khan 3y agoThere's an abundance of chill public spaces in Tokyo! So many cool parks, public rooftop spaces, and so on. I think it's just cause chess isn't popular.
- nikanj 3y agoThe emphasis here is on chill, those are all outdoor spaces and Tokyo gets quite cold during the winter
- yakubin 3y agoIs that true? According to Wikipedia: > The coolest month is January, averaging 5.4 °C Doesn’t sound very cold to me. If anything, I’ve only heard complaints about how hot it often is in Tokyo (and most of Japan, except Hokkaido).
- gpt5 3y agoCompare Brisbane and Tokyo: https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/144671~143809/Comparison-of-the-Average-Weather-in-Brisbane-and-Tokyo https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/144671~143809/Comparison-... Brisbane has "Comfortable" temperature every single day of the year. Tokyo's winter is cold and Tokyo's summer is hot.
- retrac 3y agoLooking at these temperature plots, it seems comparable to late March here in Toronto, or Chicago, or New York. Slightly lower temperature swing. Some days could be quite nice - warm, even. Others could be near freezing, with wind chill making exposed hands uncomfortably cold. Not great for chess.
- sicromoft 3y agoThe link no longer works. Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20230908050506/https://lichess.org/@/datajunkie/blog/27-why-isnt-chess-popular-in-japan/UoEDbXUU https://web.archive.org/web/20230908050506/https://lichess.o...
- Kiro 3y agoIt works for me.
- tkgally 3y ago> Even with all of the online resources now, nothing beats learning from playing over the board, so it’s been heart-warming to see the gradual yet real strides chess in Japan is making so people can ... find more chess clubs near them and nurture their love for the game. I live in Yokohama. I wasn’t aware of any chess clubs near me, but a web search turns up one in Yokohama [1] and one in neighboring Kawasaki [2]; there are more than twenty others nationwide [3]. This contrasts, though, with the much larger number of go clubs. There seem to be over thirty in Yokohama alone, including at least three within walking distance of my home. Some go clubs are small, like one on the fourth floor of a building a few blocks away [4], while others are quite large [5]. I learned how to play go in the U.S. in the late 1970s. For a few years after I moved to Japan in 1983, I sometimes played in go clubs around Tokyo. They were an interesting scene: smoke-filled rooms full of middle-aged and older men, many of whom seemed to spend all day every day there, playing game after game. There wasn’t much talking or socializing; often two people would play an entire game without exchanging more than a word or two. The first go club I ventured into, before I could speak much Japanese, was in Kabukicho on the edge of the redlight district. It was livelier than the ones I went to later, perhaps because, unlike most other go clubs, it served alcohol and was open all night. It seems to have moved to a new location deeper into Kabukicho, surrounded by bars and love hotels [6]. I never got very strong at go—maybe 4 or 5 kyu—and I haven’t played a regular game in many years. But recently, at my daughter’s request, I have started teaching my grandson how to play. It will be interesting to see if he likes it. If he does, I might show him chess, too. [1] http://ycc.wp.xdomain.jp http://ycc.wp.xdomain.jp [2] https://yasux.com https://yasux.com [3] https://japanchess.org/clublist/ https://japanchess.org/clublist/ [4] https://www.google.co.jp/maps/@35.4749685,139.6245706,3a,75y,169.01h,112.95t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sqQ180q-jUZgVOyFiTcSIQw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=ja&entry=ttu https://www.google.co.jp/maps/@35.4749685,139.6245706,3a,75y... [5] https://www.yokohamaigosalon.com/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0 https://www.yokohamaigosalon.com/%E3%83%9B%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0 [6] https://www.google.com/maps/@35.6962023,139.7020693,3a,75y,9.87h,87.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfrQ4DXdRONTSwJhi7aZqjg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@35.6962023,139.7020693,3a,75y,9...
- lifthrasiir 3y agoThe article does give this away early, but the answer is "no, chess is popular but not (yet) for the western variant". AFAIK this is same for all East Asian countries. That does make me wonder if chess (or more accurately, all games thought to originate from Chaturanga) is the first ever internationally distributed game.
- freddie_mercury 3y agoGo became "international" 200 years before the earliest forerunner of chess had even been invented. That's when it spread from China to Korea. And it reached Japan around the same time chess's earliest forerunner was being invented in India. Beyond that it seems likely that dice games from e.g. Romans, Egyptians, Assyrians were likely the first to spread as those empires spread and the soldiers who played them played them with locals.
- no_wizard 3y agoChess exploded in China though. They even have national state sponsored teams now
- marc_abonce 3y agoThe linked article about Alekhine's visit to Japan in 1933 is definitely worth reading if you want to read the point of view of a shogi player* learning Western chess: https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter80.html#6994._Alekhine_v_Kimura_Tokyo_1933 https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter80.html#6994._Alek... PS: I just called Yoshio Kimura "a shogi player" because I don't know anything about shogi, but apparently he was a big deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshio_Kimura_(shogi) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshio_Kimura_(shogi)
- 29athrowaway 3y agoChess Shogi Go Board Size 8x8 9x9 19x19 Branching Factor 35 92 250 Complexity 10^123 10^226 10^360
- hakuseki 3y agoHow were these numbers arrived at?
- tromp 3y agoI think the numbers are taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity We discuss the numbers for Go in the introduction of our paper https://matthieuw.github.io/go-games-number/AGoogolplexOfGoGames.pdf https://matthieuw.github.io/go-games-number/AGoogolplexOfGoG...
- mudita 3y agoI just wanted to say, I stumbled upon your website a few years ago through the Tromp-Taylor rules of Go and found the things you do impressive and inspiring. It’s a nice surprise to see you commenting here.
- hakuseki 3y agoSo to summarize, the game tree complexity is estimated by estimating the branching factor and the game length, and raising the former to the power of the latter. I find it slightly odd that the game length is calibrated to "reasonable" games but the branching factor is not. If the goal is to estimate the number of possible games of go, then the calculation would be dominated by the number of long games rather than the number of short games, and very long games are possible. If the goal is to estimate the number of "reasonable" games of go, then the branching factor should also be much smaller, as most possible moves are not reasonable. Perhaps the logarithm of the branching factor could be estimated as the entropy of some policy model such at that of KataGo. P.S. I am happy to have received a reply from the mighty Tromp!
- 3y ago
- xiaodai 3y agocos shogi
- will5421 3y agoBecause go got there first? Assuming most people only have enough desire to learn one deep board game, chess then has to overcome a network effect to become popular.
- mcv 3y agoAnother way to ask this question is: why is go less popular outside east asia? It's huge in Japan, China and Korea, and although it has its fans in Europe and the US, it's much more niche there. I've got to admit, since I got kids I moved back from go to chess. Somehow it's more accessible, because everybody here knows chess.
- ido 3y agoTradition + first movers advantage/network effect. We have a centuries old tradition of playing chess in europe, we dont have a tradition of playing go (and vice versa for east asia). And as you said, once everyone already knows how to play chess it's much easier to also play it vs a relatively unknown game (part of the reason why D&D is the most popular tabletop RPG - everybody knows D&D!)
- Jach 3y agoI'm not even convinced Go is all that popular in Japan compared to Shogi or Mahjong. Even Gomoku (five in a row, no capture rule) seems more popular. I can't really say anything about the popularity of go salons since I have yet to visit one but I can't help but notice that the game is never included as a minigame in Japanese titles like the Yakuza series (which has all sorts of other board minigames) or even Clubhouse Games for the Switch (51 games, one of them Gomoku, but no Go). It'd probably take another Hikaru no Go to increase popularity again...
- TRiG_Ireland 3y agoThe board game review channel Shut Up & Sit Down was absolutely enamoured of Go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRBjN8empIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRBjN8empIs
- ziyao_w 3y agoThis article does not seem to mention this but Bobby Fischer lived in Japan and his wife is a WIM - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyoko_Watai https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyoko_Watai. He certainly had his insanities but some accounts say he was quite sane in his later years, and it must be amusing to be possibly the GOAT and living incognito in a place where chess wasn’t played much.
- remram 3y agoWIM = Woman International Master
- jononomo 3y agoI just watched a tutorial on Shogi and apparently the pieces are distinguished from each other by the Japanese-language symbols on them, which is a deal-breaker for me.
- Oreb 3y agoYou don’t need to be able to read the character. You only need to be able to remember that the piece that looks like this moves like that. This is no different from western chess.
- vintermann 3y agoIt's really easy to get used to. It's not in principle harder than learning the chess pieces. You don't have to learn what the symbols mean, any more than you do for Mahjong.
- anuraaga 3y agoI remember first coming to Japan and playing a round of chess with someone who had mostly never played but was very strong at Shogi. I'm not master or anything but had played a lot and was still generally confident in tactics, and had experience playing with new players, adjusting to keep a good game pace while still winning. Got obliterated. Also then started playing Shogi with him for the first time and while it didn't take that long to triumph with an all pawns handicap, after much effort finally reached being able to win including rooks/bishops. But it was obviously basically cheating since eventually you realize how easy it is to win with handicap be just putting 100% into defense. Anyways, with those games to me it really felt that Shogi is the more strategic game, having similar mechanics to chess but being more dynamic. Chess in the end, even looking at GM matches, looks like much more pattern matching, i.e., tactics. So my takeaway from that was that as much as I enjoy chess, Shogi is just the more complex game and its experts may just be able to defeat masters if they cared to because of the otherwise similar mechanics, as one of the anecdotes in the article. Random share this is just personal but honest feeling from past experience and not an endorsement. Really fun memories.