A reformative shogi design which is acceptable to japanese people
I've created this beautiful new Shogi piece design.
The main idea was pretty simple: make the pieces readable without having to know Kanji. This is probably going to upset the Kanji apologists, but hear me out. A common argument for keeping Kanji on Shogi pieces is that "you have to preserve the Kanji because Shogi is japanese and it's important to respect japanese culture", duh.
But this argument is completely bogus, kanji literally means "chinese characters". The characters used on Shogi pieces aren't japanese but chinese. So actually keeping kanji doesn't preserve japanese but chinese culture.Keep your facts straight!
My design tries to preserve the traditions that actually have something to do with the game itself.The pawns still have the traditional Shogi piece shapes. Each piece has a little black Shogi piece inside it, which also acts as a possession indicator. And there is actual japanese writing incorporated into the set, in constract to chinese character shogi sets.
Other reform sets fail in that regard, that you not only have to convince international audiences to try shogi, you also have to convince japanese people to give up chinese character sets for your design. You shouldn't need to memorizing half an alphabet before you touch your first piece. Once you know the symbols, you can immediately start playing.
So yes, the chinese characters are gone.
But the shogi isn't. 😄