(photo credit Japan Shogi Association)

The first top professional player vs computer Shogi(Wikipedia) match Dennousen (Battle of Cyber-King) was held at Shogi Kaikan (Japan Shogi Association building), Tokyo January 14, 2012.

Kunio Yonenaga, an ex grand-master (in 1993) and a chairman of Japan Shogi Association, who retired in 2003, played against a computer program “Bonkura-s”. Although he is a retired pro, it is the first time computer defeats top-pro.

In 2010, an women player belongs to the female-only pro-league lost a game against other computer program Akara 2010. The second Dennousen is being planned this year with 5 active pro players.

Japanese chess has the same origin as Chinese and Western chess, Chaturanga from India, and same as in computer chess in West, it has been popular research issue to make a strong computer program. In Western chess case, IBM Deep Blue first beat the world champion in 1996. However, Shogi having the rule of reusing captured pieces makes much more complexity on computing and so far the strength of the top computer-shogi programs were thought as top amateur level.

Japanese Shogi Association holds over 100 pro players. Most major newspaper have and sponsor their own leagues, and has Shogi news every day. The Top player is said to earn about 1.3 million dollars in a year.

Appropriate to the computer match, one of the sponsors of this Dennousen title is Dwango, who runs Japan’s YouTube rival Nico Nico Douga. Nico Nico Live broadcast [J] the whole game for 10 hours. According to Kunio Yonenaga’s Twitter, over a million Nico Nico Douga users watched the game, and 341,000 of them were paid subscribers.

https://twitter.com/yonenagakunio/status/158384657644257280

See Also:

If you are interested in play Shogi and have an Android handset, Android Shogi (you need the data app as well) is free and quite good. If that does not compete you, PC apps having the same Bonanza engine are stronger.

After the match interview on Kunio Yonenaga [J]

Nico Nico News [J]

asahi [J]

Sankei Sports [J]

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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2011 is over – reason enough to take a look at some of the key trends that shaped Japan’s web, mobile, and gaming industries last year.

I could think, in no particular order, of five major developments that made a significant impact last year:

March 11 Triple Disaster
The triple disaster that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, highlighted the power and importance of social media and the web at large when it comes to communicating and sharing information with others – especially as the phone networks went bust immediately after the earthquake and made voice communication impossible.

Challenges remain, such as the digital divide (young vs. old people, users who are web-savvy vs. those who aren’t, etc.) or the danger of mass-distributing false information through social media, but the web’s “reputation” has clearly risen in Japan.

Internationalization
The list of Japanese web, mobile, and gaming companies that started expanding across borders (or bolstered their efforts) in 2011 is long: Rakuten, DeNA, GREE, Dwango’s Nico Nico Douga, and CyberAgent are just the most prominent examples.

Quite a few startups are now creating services that are multi-lingual from the get-go (i.e. Sumally, Beatrobo, Crowsnest, etc., etc.).

The tech industry is maturing, Japan’s population is greying, and entrepreneurs need to deal with saturated markets: expect internationalization to only pick up speed in the next years.

Android Revolution
The smartphone revolution started earlier than 2011 (mainly driven by the smash success of the iPhone), but it was during the last year that Android really started gaining a foothold in Japan. Just one example: SoftBank’s winter 2011 cell phone line-up includes just one feature phone – but nine Android handsets.

Feature phones are still king in Japan, but market research companies like Tokyo-based MM Research are expecting smartphone shipments to outnumber those of traditional handsets next year.

Americanization
2011 is the year that Facebook started to become popular in Japan even though it will take at least another year to determine how sustainable the growth really is – not too few people think it has the potential to eventually throw market leader Mixi off the throne. Twitter has seen another massive boost in popularity after March 11 (see above).

In mobile, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS are set to dominate the market in the next years – local mobile platforms have no chance in the foreseeable future.

• the removal of sim-locks in Japanese cell phones
• the termination of analog TV (and rise of connected TVs) after 58 years
• major Japanese video game makers going social,
• or ebooks slowly (but surely) gaining popularity in Japan.

Tags: Japan, Trend by Serkan Toto
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Japanese online video sharing service Nico Nico Douga has got 1.5 million paid subscribers on January 3, 2012.

Nico Nico Douga, with its unique overlay user-generated comments, is known by users’ videos, but recently it airs programs from TV and movie as well both in free and paid channels.

Nico Nico Premium Membership costs 525 yen (US$6.8) per month.

It passed 1 million paid users on October 13, 2010. These days it seems to add

Hulu Plus, a paid service of U.S. Hulu, passed 1 million subscribers in September 2011. Whlist Hulu has 40 million users in total, Nico Nico Douga’s number, having 1.5 million paying out of 22-23 million users, is impressive. And it is not the largest paid video service in Japan.

[Update 2012-01-13] Hulu announced that their paid subscribers got 1.5 million.

You may check our past news on Nico Nico Douga here.

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Nico Nico Douga’s Twitter bot celebrated 1.5 million paid users [J]

http://twitter.com/#!/nicount_bot/status/153871090115018752

Tags: Japan, News by Akky Akimoto
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So far, only YouTube users from Canada, the US and (since October) the UK were able to rent movies, but yesterday, Japan has finally been added to the list, too (the country is the second biggest market for movies in the world).

Youtube users in Japan can initially stream content from a total of five American and local studios onto their PCs and Android phones, namely

• Toei
• Sony Pictures
• Universal
• Warner Bros.
• Bandai Channel (for anime)

On its official blog, YouTube Japan says that the initial line-up consists of a mix between paid and free movies (200 in total), for example Unknown, Red Riding Hood, Take Me Home Tonight, or Sucker Punch.

Paid titles cost either 300 or 400 Yen, depending on how new they are. Movies can be rented from 24 to 72 hours.

The online movie rental space in Japan has seen some movement recently. Apart from established players like Gyao, YouTube Japan’s new service competes with newcomer Hulu (which started streaming movies and other content in Japan in September this year) or Nico Nico Douga (which started doing the same in cooperation with Warner Bros. a few days ago).

Tags: Android, Japan, New Service, Video by Serkan Toto
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Japan’s 2nd biggest convenience chain-store Lawson makes its image character girl ‘Akiko-chan’ transformed to Vocaloid, Yamaha’s artificial voice synthesizer brand well-known by used for a popular virtual singer Hatsune Miku.

The official Lawson-channel [J] is made on Nico Nico Douga.

via ITMedia

See Also:

Asiajin » Japanese Virtual Diva Hatsune Miku First US Tour In July

Tags: Japan by Akky Akimoto
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