Single Comment

I definitely agree that unmentioned rules should be understood to be the same as in Chu Shogi. That lion-power moves should be broken up in two steps in Chu is not so obvious, though. In fact I have strong disagreement about that with the Chu-Shogi renmei, in connection with the Lion-trading rules. The disputed case is when you make a double-capture on Pawn + Lion, where the Lion was standing in front of the Pawn. My interpretation of 'protected' is that recapture should be possible. The historic rule descriptions, by mentioning the case of a 'hidden protector', tell us that you have to judge the situation after the move, not before. The whole idea of those rules, after all, is to prevent Lion trading, and when there is no recapture, there can be no trading. The Chu-Shogi renmei, however, claims that my interpretation implies that the move is made in two parts, and that only after the first, which takes the Pawn, the Lion has become unprotected. And they insist that protection must be measured before the move, and has nothing to do with recapture. And then they continue by saying that you cannot split the move in parts and consider those as independent moves, so that the doomed Pawn would count as a protector.

Also note that 'igui' seems to mean 'stationary eating', and 'stationary' usually means you don't move at all. So one could argue that the underlying philosophy that led to that name is that the Lion never visits the zone when it takes a piece in it through igui.