3 Best Japanese Chess Sets for Shogi Players (2026)

Japanese chess is shogi, and the set I'd buy first is the Yellow Mountain Imports wooden board model with the two drawers (B003UKEMSS). The board measures 10.6 x 9.8 x 1.8 inches. Wood veneer on MDF, maple koma, storage built into the thing, English manual in the box. That's a whole table in one purchase.

Shogi isn't western chess with odd-looking pieces. Twenty a side, drops from your hand back onto the board, promotion by turning a piece over. So a set has to do two jobs at once: readable kanji, and a board that holds still. Here are the three worth your money, ranked.

The grid is 9 by 9, so 81 squares have to hold eight piece types, and that changes the shopping list. A western board can get away with small pieces. A shogi board can't. Those same 81 squares also have to survive koma landing on them from a height every time somebody drops a pawn back into play.

How I picked these

I set thresholds before I opened a single listing. The king is the biggest koma in the box, so it has to clear an inch across; pawns can't fall below 0.8 inch. One listing states those numbers outright (king 1.1 x 1.1 x 0.3 inches, pawns 0.8 x 1 x 0.2 inches), and that's the kind of disclosure I want to see. Koma get flipped every few moves, so a cramped piece means fumbling mid-game.

Script matters as much as size. The pieces should be printed two-tone: black kanji on the head, red on the tail, in the running-hand lettering the Japanese call Bantarou-goma, with Genpai-goma being the coloring style. Single-color printing photographs fine and reads miserably across a table. Eight piece types in running-hand script is alot of ink to get right at 0.8 inch.

Board construction comes next. Veneered MDF is acceptable at this price. A paper shogiban is a placeholder, not a board, and I say that as a guy with a soft spot for cheap starter gear. If you want the long version of the veneer versus solid wood argument for western sets, my best wooden chess sets page goes deeper.

The footprint math is worth doing yourself. A 9.8 inch side over nine files works out to roughly an inch per square before you subtract the frame, and the listing doesn't print a square measurement, so call it arithmetic rather than a promise. In western sets the old rule is a king base at 75 to 80 percent of a square. Shogi runs tighter, and a 1.1 inch king on a board this size is about as snug as I'd want.

Last is return friction. A 1.8 inch thick wooden board with drawers doesn't ship in a padded envelope. Check the window and who pays return shipping before you commit, because sending a set this size back costs real money.

Best overall

1. Yellow Mountain Imports Shogi Japanese Chess Game Set

by Yellow Mountain Imports

• Ready To Play: Full English illustrated instruction manual included

Check price on Amazon

The only complete table in the group. Board with two drawers underneath, maple koma, and a full English illustrated manual, which matters because shogi notation and drop rules trip up western players fast. The face is wood veneer on MDF at 10.6 x 9.8 x 1.8 inches, so it sits low and steady, and the drawers mean the pieces never end up living in a bag.

Setting up takes about a minute. Twenty koma a side, and the drawers swallow 40 plus whatever spares you keep. The 1.8 inch body gives the board enough mass that it won't skate when you set a rook down hard after a drop.

My concession: the listing doesn't state a piece count. Forty is the number you need for a legal game, 20 a side. If the box arrives short, you're buying a second set to make the first one work, and that's an annoying sentence to write. There's also no komadai (the stand for captured pieces) in the box, so plan on a small tray. Captured koma in shogi go back into your hand, which means they live on the table, not in the drawer, for most of the game.

What owners say: this listing carries no rating count and no review text, so I won't invent a chorus. What I'd inspect in the first ten minutes: drawer slides, veneer edges at the corners, and whether the kanji is crisp or bled. Veneer and MDF also don't love a radiator or a damp garage. Keep it in the living room.

Good for: a first real shogi set that lives on a table. Skip it if: you want solid wood throughout, or you already own good koma.

Best piece upgrade

2. YMI Wooden Shogi Japanese Chess Set with Paper Board

by Yellow Mountain Imports

Check price on Amazon

Forty-two solid maple koma. A game needs 40 (20 a side), so two spares ride along, and that's the sort of arithmetic I like in a product. The sizes are printed on the listing: king 1.1 x 1.1 x 0.3 inches, bishop and rook 0.9 x 1.1 x 0.3 inches, golds, silvers and knights 0.9 x 1 x 0.3 inches, lances and pawns 0.8 x 1 x 0.2 inches. Bantarou-goma script, black head, red tail.

Those thicknesses matter more than they sound. A pawn at 0.2 inch is a thin wafer in the hand, which is normal for shogi and still takes a week to get used to. A knight at 0.9 inch is a comfortable pickup. Two-tone printing on a 0.8 inch lance is the hardest line to keep clean, so that's the piece I'd squint at first.

The concession is the board. It's a paper shogiban, a printed sheet. It creases, it slides on a smooth table, and by week three you'll be hunting for something better. Buy this as a piece set, or to patch a set that's missing a pawn. A missing pawn isn't a small problem, since nifu rules and drops both assume you have nine of them.

What owners say: no reviews attached here either, so here's the practical read. The standard complaint about paper boards is the fold line landing right where the action is, plus pieces skating when you drop them. A sheet of felt or a rubber mat under it fixes most of that.

Good for: upgrading koma, replacing losses, or pairing with the board above. Skip it if: you have no board yet and wanted one purchase.

Best budget starter

3. Japanese Chess Classical Honkaku Shogi Game Set by Hanayama

by Hanayama

• It is the shogi set of the plastic board.
• Please enjoy the world of deep shogi on a board side of big size.

Check price on Amazon

The listing is two sentences long. A plastic board, a note about a big board side, and that's it. No dimensions, no piece material, no count, no rating. I'm ranking it third because I can't verify much, not because I think it's bad. Hanayama has been making games in Japan for decades, so the odds are decent.

Where it earns a place: travel and teaching. Plastic shrugs off a backpack, a classroom floor, a kid's elbows. Twenty kids around one table is exactly the abuse this thing is built for, and a wooden board with veneer corners would lose that fight.

Concession, and it's the obvious one: no plastic board feels like wood under your hand, and this set doesn't list the number I'd want most, which is the size of the playing surface. Without that, I can't tell you whether a 1.1 inch king fits the squares.

What owners say: nothing to quote, since the page carries no review data. If you're considering it anyway, message the seller for board dimensions and piece count first. Both are fair questions and neither is answered on the listing. Ask for the square size too, not just the outer footprint. A big board side in a marketing bullet can mean the frame.

Good for: club demos, classrooms, a first set for a kid. Skip it if: the set stays on your living room table.

What actually matters when you buy Japanese chess sets

Piece count and spares. Shogi is 20 a side, so buy a set that lists 40 or more. The maple set here lists 42, which is one reason it ranks above anything with an unknown count. If a seller won't tell you, walk. Drops put pieces in your hand and on the table constantly, and a table piece is a piece that rolls.

Koma size against the board. A king around 1.1 inches and pawns around 0.8 inch is a sane working range. Go smaller and the five-sided pieces start reading like blank tiles from across the room. Go much larger and eight piece types crowd the 81 squares.

Two-tone script. Black on the head, red on the tail. That's how you catch a promotion at a glance instead of squinting. Promoted pieces sit in the last three ranks most of the time, which is exactly where the light is worst in a club hall.

Board material and storage. Veneer on MDF, solid wood, plastic, paper. None of these three listings gives a board weight, so judge by thickness and by whether the thing has drawers or a box. A loose bag of koma is how pawns disappear. If you're also outfitting a western board, my chess sets hub covers the basics.

Return terms. Boards are bulky and shipping goes both ways. Check the window before you order. And if you play western chess too, the best tournament chess sets have to survive a club hall in a way a shogi board never will.

Side by side

Short version, specs pulled straight from the listings.

Which one I'd buy

If shogi is the game and the set lives on a table, order B003UKEMSS. The drawers alone justify it; you get a board, storage and a manual in one box, and the only real gap is the missing piece count. Add a cheap tray for captured koma and you're playing the same night.

If you already own a board and the koma are the weak link, the 42-piece maple set is the smarter buy, paper board be damned. Two spares is a real margin when a pawn can vanish under a sofa. And if this was really a detour on the way to western chess with tall kings and felted bases, go read my best luxury chess sets list instead. Different game, diffrent money.