Castles · 菊水矢倉
Kikusui Yagura.
A Yagura crouched one rank lower: the king down on 8i, a silver on 8h above him and a knight on 7g where the silver usually stands.
How it goes together
The golds stand where a Gold Yagura has them, on 7h and 6g, with the pawns on 7f and 6f in front. Everything else moves down a step. The left silver sits on 8h, the square a Gold Yagura gives its king; the knight jumps from 8i to 7g, the square a Gold Yagura gives its silver; and the king takes the knight’s old square, 8i, on the bottom rank. The 7h gold guards the 8h silver and the 6g gold, and the 8h silver and both golds guard the knight. A knight does not guard the square in front of it, so the 7f pawn has one guard, the 6g gold.
Move by move
Black only, from the start, in the order of the Japan Shogi Association’s castle column: the bishop goes up to 7g early and comes back to 6h to make room, the left silver steps straight to 8h, and the king walks to 6i and 7i, then steps into 8i once the knight has jumped.
Step through the moves, or press play.
Tap a move to jump to it. Arrow keys work once the board has focus.
Fifteen moves. The pushes on 2f and 5f and the silver on 4h are the column’s, not part of the castle, and the column notes the bishop can go back to 5i instead of 6h if you want it on 2f later. The silver never stands on 7g: the knight takes that square.
What it is good against
Distance from above. A king on 8i is a long way from an attack that comes straight down the files, such as Climbing Silver or Spearing the Sparrow (雀刺し), and ja.wikipedia, shogi-joutatsu and shougi.jp all name that as its strength.
Where it breaks
The side and the knight’s head. With the king on the bottom rank, a rook dropped on that rank checks it at once (shougi.jp, shogi-gym), and ja.wikipedia calls it weak against attacks from the side. The JSA column warns that it suits a bishop exchange badly: in its example a bishop dropped on 4i and a pawn coming to 7e leave the knight’s head with no good defence.
When to build it
Double static rook games, Yagura above all, as a reply to attacks from above (ja.wikipedia, shougi.jp); ja.wikipedia’s example has White building it against Black’s Spearing the Sparrow. Takashima Kazukiyo devised it in the decade after 1945 and named it after 菊水, the crest of Kusunoki Masashige, the hero of his home town (ja.wikipedia). The JSA column’s example is Yanai Rieko’s game 3 of the 1997 Women’s Ōi match, which she went on to win 3-2, and some call it the Yanai Yagura after her.
Build it at the board.
The app’s lesson walks the king into a Mino one step at a time, and its review names the castle you were building when a game turned.