Openings · 中飛車
Central Rook.
Point the rook and the centre pawn straight down the middle, and fight on the one file neither king can avoid.
The idea
The most direct of the ranging rooks: the rook comes to the middle file, the pawn in front of it goes to 5e, and everything points at the file neither player can ignore. Nothing is hidden and nothing is subtle, which is what makes it the easiest ranging rook to learn and one of the hardest to meet.
The castle is the Half Mino (片美濃), a Mino with a gold still at home: the rook is standing on 5h, where the full Mino wants that gold, so it never arrives. That is not a slip in the build order, it is what the opening costs, and in exchange the rook sits on the most valuable file on the board.
How it goes together
Only Black’s moves are shown. This is a build order rather than a game: the opponent is left standing still, because a reply on every move would hide the shape instead of explaining it. Every move was still played through the engine, so the position is one the rules allow.
Step through the moves, or press play.
Tap a move to jump to it. Arrow keys work once the board has focus.
Every move of the line, with reasons
| # | Black | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ▲５六歩 5g5f | The centre pawn first. |
| 2 | ▲７六歩 7g7f | Then the bishop’s diagonal. |
| 3 | ▲７七角 8h7g | The bishop covers 8f before the rook leaves home. |
| 4 | ▲５五歩 5f5e | To 5e. The pawn that gives the Central Rook its face; the name comes from the centre file. |
| 5 | ▲５八飛 2h5h | The rook comes to the middle, behind its own pawn. |
| 6 | ▲４八玉 5i4h | The king starts walking. |
| 7 | ▲３八玉 4h3h | Two. |
| 8 | ▲２八玉 3h2h | Three, and home. |
| 9 | ▲３八銀 3i3h | The silver beside it. This is the Half Mino (片美濃): a Mino without the 5h gold, because the rook is standing there. |
| 10 | ▲１六歩 1g1f | The escape square every Mino wants. |
The plan once you are set up
- The break is 5d. Exchange the centre pawn when you can recapture with the rook, and the file opens with your rook already on it.
- The bishop on 7g and the rook on the fifth file cover most of the board between them. Keep that diagonal open and keep your own pieces off the rook’s file.
- Once the centre is settled, tidy the castle rather than rebuild it. The gold cannot come to 5h while the rook is there, so the 4i gold and the 1f escape square are what you have.
- If the centre gets blocked, swing the rook again, to the second file or the fourth. A rook that has run out of work on one file is not stuck.
What to watch for
- A silver coming to 5f to sit on your pawn. Meet it with the bishop or the 6g pawn before it settles.
- The 5h square. With the rook standing there the castle is a gold short, so a piece dropped near the king costs more than it would against a full Mino.
- An Anaguma. It is one of the usual answers to this opening, and against it you have to break in the centre early rather than build.
What it is played against
Both families, and it is the ranging rook most often chosen as a first plan rather than a reply. Against a static rook the fight is the centre pawn; against another ranging rook it becomes a race on the two middle files.
Two more Central Rooks
ja.wikipedia files both of these under the Silver Horns Central Rook. Neither has a sourced move order to its finished shape, so they are shown as positions.
Hide-chan Central Rook (英ちゃん流中飛車)
Yamaguchi Hideo, whose nickname was Hide-chan, played the Central Rook without pushing the centre pawn. He said he built it against the King’s Head Vanguard Pawn that static rook players were using at the time.
Compared with the line above, the bishop’s diagonal is closed with the pawn on 6f, the left silver stands on 6g, and the fifth-file pawn never moves; the castle is the same Half Mino. Shogi Wars describes the aim as meeting a rapid attack quickly.
In the continuation ja.wikipedia gives from the first board, White builds slowly, and Black brings the castle’s silver up to 4g, swings the rook to 3h and opens the third file with the pawn to 3e: the move not spent on the centre pawn goes into the counterattack (the second board).
If White starts a rapid attack on the sixth file instead, the silver on 6g can go to 5f, the square the centre pawn would have used. English sources also write the name Hi-chan.
Pinwheel (風車)
Itō Hatasu built the Pinwheel out of the Silver Horns Central Rook as an answer to the Static Rook Anaguma, and he gives his own build, for Black alone: 7f and 6f, the left silver to 6h and 6g, the rook to 5h, the king to 4h and 3h, the right silver to 4h, the pawns to 5f, 4f and 3f, the silver up to 4g, the bishop to 7g, the golds to 7h and 4h, the rook down to 5i, the knight to 3g, and the pawns to 2f and 1f.
Every pawn that can be pushed is pushed, and the rook can drop to 5i because the gold came to 4h first (the first board).
From there he gives routes, not an order: the bishop goes back to 6h and on to 5g, the left knight jumps to 7g, the gold moves across to 3h once the king has left, the lances step up, the king walks to the centre, and the rook slides along the bottom rank from edge to edge, which gives the opening its name (the second board, Itō’s own diagram).
Itō says there is no castle: the whole formation is the castle, and every piece works. His motto was not to fight and not to attack, and a repetition draw was a good result. Moriuchi Toshiyuki, quoted on ja.wikipedia, says it is hard for anyone but Itō to play.
Few others played it until AI programs rated it well, and Itō received the Masuda Kōzō Award for it, announced in 2026.
Play it against the bot.
The bot’s search levels, 9 to 12, open from a book that holds two of these openings, the Fourth File Rook and the Yagura; the Mino levels play the openings people play. Either way the review afterwards shows you where the game left the line. Try the line, then try the plan.