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BTW, just looking at the game suggests Sho Shogi would not stand a chance to rival Chu in popularity. Compared to Chu it is as dull as Shatranj is compared to modern Chess.

This is a subjective claim, and Spengler Georg is right to criticize you for it. Saying something like this just doesn't prove your point. Besides that, the complexity of the game is a strike against it. Popularity is about numbers, and more people are likely to play a game in greater numbers if it is easier to learn.

In addition all historic variants seem to be based on Chu Shogi, and evolved towards larger size. If people would have thought the smaller game was better, you would have expected them to make variants based on Sho.

This is a more compelling point, though it will require some demonstration, and it still doesn't prove that Chu Shogi was more popular. Furthermore, modern Shogi is apparently a variant of Sho Shogi, and that became the most popular Shogi variant in modern times.

If Sho Shogi was more popular, then it followed the same trend seen in China, Korea, and the west of the most popular variant being a game of around the same size with similar pieces, and it better accounts for modern Shogi being more popular today than Chu Shogi is. But if Chu Shogi was the more popular game, it is the exception to the rule, and we are left wondering why its popularity declined in favor of a very different game. So it looks like the default position is that Sho Shogi was the more popular game, and if you want to claim that Chu Shogi was more popular, you will need hard evidence to back this up.