Every summer, the Japan Expo takes place in Paris. This major pop culture event welcomes more than 80’000 fans of japanese culture. Mainly oriented towards manga & anime universe, this event is also a strong opportunity to promote traditional culture. For this reason, the parisian branch of French Federation of Shogi uses to introduce shogi on a large booth where people can learn dobutsu shogi and shogi, and even play on tatami with a “real” wooden shogiban on legs.

This year French Federation of Shogi has collaborated with the musical groupe “Gagaku Shofukai” to execute something special. Gagaku is a form of traditional Japanese music that appeared in Japan as early as the 5th century. Officially becoming court music from the 7th century onwards, it was primarily performed for noble families and the Emperor, and was sometimes linked to Shinto worship. Currently dying out in Japan, this music is kept alive thanks to a few groups, like “Gagaku Shofukai”, wishing to keep this Japanese art alive. Thanks to the support of Mr. Inagaki, a big shogi fan and owner of a shogi bar in Nagoya, the idea came to him to propose a collaboration between this group and the French Shogi Federation.

In fact, the idea was to bring together two practices that were performed in the past in front of the Emperor, namely Gagaku concerts and shogi games. The concept, as you will have understood, consisted of offering a mini gagaku concert in front of which two players, a Japanese (Mr. Inagaki himself) and a French (FFS chairman, Fabien Osmont) faced off in a rapid shogi game (10 minutes knockout).

This performance attracted a curious audience, among whom some went to discover the game of shogi at the shogi booth located a stone’s throw away.