Paper Shogi Boards

Years ago, I made up some PDFs you can print out to make shogi tokens and boards. Lots of people around the world have used these to learn shogi without incurring the expense of buying a board and pieces. They are a great cheap way of getting extra shogi boards for a school shogi club, too.

Shogi boards are a little hard to come by outside of Japan. If you’re looking to find one, I would recommend checking any local Oriental/Japanese specialty stores or ask a Japanese friend where he/she would look. Another good source is Ebay. Do a search on Shogi and see what offerings are out there. There are also some sites on the web that sell Shogi boards, but I’ve never used them so can’t give any advise about them.

Shogi boards tend to be made in Japan, for now, so are expensive imports. A good alternative is to make your own. That’s the focus of this page.

English speakers are use to board games that are played on boards made with a similar process as book covers. Think about it. If you examine many board games and compare them to the cover of hard cover books you’ll find they’re the same.

I have never seen a Shogi board come out of Japan that was made like a book cover. Typically they are made out of a … board. Hmm, … imagine that.

Sometimes you’ll find that Shogi boards are made out of hard plastics. Also something that is not common in English speaking countries, is that Shogi boards and pieces are simply paper. This takes a lot of getting use to by some players.

This page has links to PDFs of several styles of boards and pieces that you can print out and use to make your own Shogi board and pieces. It’s a great inexpensive way to get started playing Shogi.

Shogi board without pieces

Shogi board with  blank pieces

Traditional style board and pieces

Alternate traditional style board and pieces

Western style board and pieces

Davis Style board and pieces

Davis style board and pieces (black and white)