Diagrammatic Pieces define the pieces moves on the item itself. This removes the need to memorize the moveset to the symbol needed in many forms of chess
Western Chess - Maple Landmark
Wooden Pieces with the moves written on the bottom (so you have to lift them up to see)
Maple Landmark Image
Japanese Chess - Dobutsu Shogi (in the greenwood)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C5%8Dbutsu_sh%C5%8Dgi
Cute animals with the moves indicated by dots around the edge of the piece, probably the best diagrammatic set I've seen
Dobutsu shogi image
Japanese Chess - Kumon Study Shogi set
Very similiar to dobutsu shogi, but with the original character written in the middle instead of a cute animal. The wood feels good in the hand
Study Shogi image
Eastern chess sets will often have "westernized" pieces, that are different non-language characters symbols, but still require people to memorize a symbol lookup table.
I'd love to find diagrammatic options for Chinese Chess (XongQi), but I haven't seen any - do you know of options?
Happily lishogi.org lets you select the diagrammatic pieces which makes playing online really nice.
lishogi dobutsu piece set
Sadly lichess.org does not have the same diagrammatic options!
LOL lishogi?! Amazing, had no clue this existed.
Do you know what website (if any) Japanese people (and international shogi players) use to play shogi with others? Is it lishogi?
lishogi is kinda new (5ish years I think), i was around when it got forked from lichess.
I use lishogi because you don't need an account and it just works, but I think its pretty niche. It does have a adapted stockfish engine to play against.
Inside japan I think shogiwars is the most popular, but its kinda impenetrable for me, so I just tried it now... they have english in 2026 which is nice! But you can't change the pieces, however its a real experience worth visiting once.
Have you seen Chu Shogi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chu_shogi - It's a whole thing, intense, its on lishogi but without a ai bot to play against, so human vs human only. It would be nice to play chu shogi against a bot to practice, but I don't know where to do that.
Thanks for the reply!
I've never heard of Chu Shogi... It looks cool :D