Castles · 矢倉早囲い
Quick Yagura.
The Gold Yagura one move faster: the king walks up and across to 8h, so the bishop only steps back to 7i and stays there.
How it goes together
The finished squares are a Gold Yagura’s: king on 8h, golds on 7h and 6g, silver on 7g behind the 7f pawn, and the 6f pawn in front of the 6g gold. One piece differs. The bishop sits on 7i, under the 7h gold, where the usual build leaves it on 6h. The 7h gold covers 8g in front of the king and 7i behind it, and both golds guard the 7g silver.
Move by move
Black only, from the start position, in eleven moves. The silver and the right gold go up first, the bishop steps back to 7i, then the king walks 6h, 7h, 8h, and the left gold comes up last.
Step through the moves, or press play.
Tap a move to jump to it. Arrow keys work once the board has focus.
Our Yagura page reaches the same king, golds and silver in twelve moves. The extra move there is the bishop’s second step, 7i to 6h, which clears 7i for a king walking along the bottom rank. Here the king never touches 7i, so the bishop can stay. After move 9 the king stands on 7h with the gold still under it on 6i: ja.wikipedia draws that position under this castle’s name, and one source warns that the castle is weak from above at that point.
What it is good against
Tempo. ja.wikipedia counts the saving as the move that puts the bishop on 6h, though not quite a full move, since the bishop ends on 7i instead. It spread in the early 1980s against Yagura players who kept their rook pawn back, because the bishop could go on covering the edge while the king walked into the castle.
Where it breaks
The build itself. ja.wikipedia lists the costs: the silver has to reach 7g early, which leaves the centre thin; the gold for 7h has to wait; and the king crosses the second rank, where attacks hit it harder. Until the last gold arrives the king is unsteady, and a rapid Yagura attack, Yonenaga’s above all, is hard to meet. Once built, the bishop on 7i takes a square from the king, and shogi-gym names the edge as a weak point.
When to build it
Double Yagura games, for either player. ja.wikipedia says it rose in the early 1980s, faded once players saw how well rapid attacks worked against it, and came back when Fujii Takeshi built his own version as Black, keeping the king on 7h and finishing in a Half Yagura. White can play it too; Tanaka Torahiko did.
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.