Morishita System

In shogi, the Morishita System (森下システム morishita shisutemu) is a strategy used by Black in Double Fortress (Static Rook) openings. The strategy was invented by professional player Taku Morishita for which he won the prestigious Kōzō Masuda shogi award. Morishita himself has described it as a way of thinking rather than a specific strategy. Hitoshige Awaji and Teruichi Aono are well known for their efforts to systematize it.

The accompanying diagram shows the basic position. The Morishita System delays moving the right attacking silver to 37 early. Instead, it simply moves the bishop to 68 allowing the king to move into the Fortress castle in subsequent moves. The position continues with Black's N-37, B-64, and P-26. While it is traditionally said in shogi that Fortress is a position in which "Black decides the position while White deals with it," in this strategy this is intentionally reversed. It can be said that the way of thinking is that with the P-26 push, the Nakahara style B-68 move is handed over.

Just like in the Katō subvariation of the S-37 variation, when the attitude is decided ahead of time, the main point of the Morishita system is for Black to wait to see the opponent's attitude before deciding on one. With the right silver on S-48 castling the king becomes the priority, and depending on White's strategy, typically S-57 and then S57-68 can be used, or alternatively the knight will be jumped to N-37 (this is also called Knight-37 strategy) and the rook moved to the third file, so that P-46 and then S-47 can be used. Finally, a S-37 strategy can also be developed from it.

For some time, the Morishita System become the dominant way to play Fortress. Compared with the earlier three strategies of R-29, Spearing the Sparrow, and Climbing Silver variation of Fortress, the "wait and see" attitude was compared with rock–paper–scissors.

By castling faster than White, the defining feature of the Morishita System also becomes a weak point insofar as it enables a Spearing the Sparrow attack. Due to this weak point, the Morishita System all but disappeared.

Against this, Masataka Gōda's play consisting of moving the rook to R-38 without engaging in the G-67, P-74 exchange came to be called the Gōda variation. By postponing the king's move, this strategy provided capacity of resistance against Spearing the Sparrow. With the aim of exchanging pawns on the third file and so on, it was said that this strategy took over the main rationale behind the Morishita System and became a revival of its driving power. The basic idea of this strategy was to move on the third rather than on the second file by not pushing the rook pawn.

While Gōda's R-38 variation was being played, Kōichi Fukaura started research on the conventional Morishita System resulting in postponing the king's move to K-88 against Spearing the Sparrow, by moving the silver to S-46, and then P-55, Px55, Sx55, hence building the position from the fifth file, which was found effective and made the Morishita System become popular once again.

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (December 2016) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,284 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:森下システム]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|森下システム}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

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• v
• t
• e

• Fortress opening
• Waki System
• Spearing the Sparrow
• Central Rook Fortress
• Akutsu Rapid Attack Yagura
• Static Rook

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• Shogi Maze:
  • Yagura: Morishita System 1
  • Yagura: Morishita System 2
  • Yagura: Morishita System 3
• Quest of the Lost Systems: Yagura: Morishita System