Ban-Sugoroku

A relative of backgammon crossed over from the continent and became too beloved as a gambling tool in Japan. According to the Nihon Shoki, an edict banning sugoroku was issued in the twelfth month of the third year of Empress Jito's reign (689 CE) — one of the earliest recorded bans on a form of play in the Japanese archipelago. What's interesting is what came after: the ban wasn't a one-time thing. It was repeated again and again from the Nara period into the Heian period. Banning something over and over means it kept being played over and over. And there's another paradox. The Shosoin Repository still holds a sugoroku board, linked to Emperor Shomu, inlaid with rosewood marquetry — a treasure of the nation, its birds and vine patterns worked in rosewood and ebony, ivory and deer antler. A tool for a banned game, carefully kept for thirteen hundred years. * A photograph of this board cannot be shown on this map, under the Imperial Household Agency's usage terms for Shosoin materials (no commercial use, no distribution of images). You can meet the real thing in person at the Shosoin Exhibition.