Japanese traditional games

Similar to chess, this two-player board game involves strategy, patience and cunning. There are 20 pieces per side with different abilities and rules for each piece. Unlike chess, units can be promoted once they reach the back row of the board, giving them extra movement abilities.

Shogi allows players to take captured enemy units as their own, which keeps the game dynamic until the last move. Though complex, beginners can also have fun, which is why it is the most popular board game in Japan! The game rewards patience and balance over aggression and greed. The staggering number of possibilities in any given game has made it quite popular worldwide.

Players alternate placing their pieces on the board, trying to create a line of five in a row. Think of it as the ultimate version of tic tac toe! Mahjong is a traditional tile-based game where you play with three other players to try and form winning hands.

In the West it is often compared to poker or rummy. Japanese Mahjong has it own unique and specific rules that make for a different experience! Keidoro sometimes called dorokei is a variation of tag played outside among Japanese schoolchildren where half the kids are police and the other half are thieves. There are many regional variations to this game but at the basic level, the group divides equally between police and thief. The group designates one place for the jail.

At the beginning of the game, the police give the thieves some time to disperse. Then the police look for the thieves and if they touch them, they can take the thief to jail.

Courageous thieves who have not been caught can rescue thieves from the jail by tapping on them. The game ends when all the thieves are arrested. Source: Katsushika Hokusai. In Japanese tradition, this person is called oni or demon. In Oni Gokko, the oni counts to ten with their eyes closed while the rest of the children hide. Then the oni searches for each of the children.

When they find one, they tap on them and that new kid becomes the next oni. Beigoma is a traditional spinning top game which peaked in popularity in the 20th century during the Showa period. The beigoma is made from metal, usually with a beautifully carved out kanji character written on its top side. Its bottom side comes to a point and you wrap it in cord and pull the cord quickly to give it a spin.

The game can be played on any flat surface like the top of a covered barrel. Everyone throws their beigomas at the same time onto the barrel cover. Source: Nesnad. Menko is a card flipping game popular since the Edo period and played by children.

You play with cardboard cards with one or both sides decorated with pictures and manga. To start the game, play janken to determine who goes first. Everyone else lays down their cards on the ground. The first player slaps their menko card on the ground to flip the others over. If a card is flipped over, the thrower keeps it and the loser is out. Rules and materials may change over time, but even today Japanese children are fond of pastimes from the old days.

Some of the games introduced on these pages are probably similar to those in your own country. Origami is one of Japan's best-known pastimes. The idea is to fold a square piece of paper into different shapes. The photo here shows a hollow cube, a samurai helmet, and a crane. That's right—this game originated in Japan, and it's the only one on our list to have done so! That said, the playing cards originally came from Portugal—see below.

Just like President, there are several house rules that have developed over time, but here are some of the core rules: All the cards are dealt out evenly to everyone, after which the daifugo , or Grand Millionaire, gives his or her worst two cards to the daihinmin, or Grand Pauper.

Meanwhile, the daihinmin must give his or her two best cards to the daifugo. After dealing, the game is generally played in clockwise rotation. There are five main rankings, in order from highest to lowest: 1. In some versions, the players change seats as their rankings change, with each person sitting in descending rank to the left, though this typically doesn't occur in Western adaptations.

For the first round, everyone is a heimin, or Commoner. This is a trick-taking game, but the goal is to get rid of your cards as quickly as possible. The first person to get rid of his or her cards becomes the daifugo for the next round, the second becomes the fugo , etc. The daihinmin then gathers all the cards, shuffles and deals for the next round. Despite resembling a single-player memory game you'll find on some computers, mahjong is actually a tile-based game that's structurally similar to the card game rummy.

The goal is to create sets by drawing and discarding tiles, with the ultimate objective of getting all 14 of your tiles matched into sets. The sets could be a matching three, matching four, or a sequential run of three, with a standard winning hand composed of four sets and a single pair—though there are also a few special winning hands that stand as exceptions.

The Japanese version, called Riichi Mahjong, or simply Japanese mahjong, is a slightly simplified version of Chinese mahjong, which was first introduced to Japan in —though new rules have since been added to increase the complexity.