Shogi Monk

by Gautam
(India)

The Shogi Monk

There are many fairy tales exist related to Shogi, the Japanese Chess, as the origins of Shogi still remain obscure. There is one interesting story about an old monk who used to travel a lot in his search for knowledge. He had studied and learned to play Shogi very well. Once he happened to be in a remote kingdom which had no king, since the king had just passed away.

The problem was, he had many daughters to be promoted as next successor but all of them wanted to be next ruler. As a ruler of the kingdom one has to have some important virtues. The people of the kingdom were very confused. So this old monk came in the picture and advised the princess to play the game of Shogi, which was little known to them, with him and whoever will learn and beat him first will be the next queen of the kingdom and they agreed.

Monk knew it very well that Shogi is the best tool to elect the right candidate among them. So they all started one by one, first princess came and she just laughed looking at the board and eventually could not learn the game so she left. Some of them even left instantly, some of them were tired learning the game and those who learned, could not defeat the monk. Finally they all failed and now people of the kingdom were free to elect their own candidate. So the moral of the story is: “if you want to play Shogi, be patient and courageous because it is really a serious game”.