Learn · 礼儀
The manners of the game.
None of this is in the rules and all of it is real. Shogi keeps a set of customs that a Japanese player learns before they learn a castle, and a visitor who does not know them can be rude by accident. Most of it takes a minute to learn.
What you say
A game is bracketed by two phrases. Both are said with a bow of the head, and both are said to the person, not to the board.
They are not optional politeness in the way "good luck" is in the West. Skipping them reads the way skipping a handshake would.
How a game ends
This is the custom most worth knowing, because it is the one that differs most sharply from chess habits.
The loser declares the loss. A shogi game is not usually played out to checkmate: when a strong player sees that the position is lost, they say makemashita and bow, or hold a hand over their own piece stand (駒台, komadai). Playing on in a hopeless position, hoping the opponent blunders, is considered poor manners: it spends their time on a game that is already decided.
The flip side matters too: never comment on how long an opponent took to resign. Both players are expected to read the position honestly.
There is no handshake and no "good game" chat. The bow and the phrase are the whole ceremony.
How you touch the pieces
- Place, do not slide. A piece is picked up and set down, held between the index and middle finger, and snapped onto the square. That crisp pachi is the sound of the game and a real part of playing it well.
- One hand. Move with your dominant hand only, and do not hover it over the board while you think.
- Touch-move is a convention, not a rule, in casual play. In a tournament, a move is final once the piece leaves your fingers.
- Do not tidy the captured pieces mid-thought. Pieces you have captured sit in your komadai, the stand to your right, face up and visible. Hiding them or fanning them is not allowed: your opponent has the right to see exactly what you hold.
Setting up, and who goes first
Two customs govern the start.
The pieces go out in an order. Two schools are taught, 大橋流 (Ōhashi-ryū) and 伊藤流 (Itō-ryū), and both begin with the king and work outward in a fixed sequence. It is not superstition so much as a way of confirming that all twenty pieces are present without counting them.
- King to its home square, then the two golds, then the two silvers, then the knights, then the lances.
- The bishop and rook.
- The pawns, from the center outward in the Ōhashi sequence. The Itō sequence places pawns earlier, before the lances, bishop, and rook.
Sente is usually decided by a pawn toss (振り駒, furigoma). Five pawns are tossed. More plain faces give the designated player sente; more promoted faces give the other player sente. In a handicap game, the stronger player, uwate, removes pieces and makes the first move.
After the game: the study
The custom that most defines shogi is what happens next. Both players stay at the board and replay the game together, out loud, from the beginning: 感想戦 (kansōsen). The winner explains what they were afraid of; the loser asks where it went wrong. It is not a post-mortem so much as the second half of the lesson, and professionals do it on camera after title games.
It is also why our app leaves you at the same table after the result rather than throwing you back to a menu.
Online, where none of this is enforced
The customs adapt rather than disappear:
- Resign rather than let the clock run out. Abandoning a lost game and making the other player wait for a flag is the online equivalent of walking away from the board.
- Do not stall in a won position to run the opponent's clock down when a mate is available.
- A greeting still costs nothing. Most Japanese servers see よろしくお願いします in the chat before a game starts, and ありがとうございました after.
- Take the loss quietly. The one thing that carries over unchanged.
The table stays after the result.
Every game ends in a shared review at the same board you played on, which is what kansōsen is for.