It is the Japanese version of the big family of "chess" games, whose other notable games are Western Chess and XiangQi.
It is played on a 9 by 9 board, and the object is to capture the opponent's king. There are two main differences with Western chess. First, not only pawns but almost every piece can promote if it reaches the opponents three last rows. Second and most distinctive characteristic is that captured pieces become property of the capturing player and during his turn he can "parachute" or "drop" them back to the board instead of performing a normal move. Because of this feature, similar to Bughouse, the game can last longer than a Chess game, the board generally stays fairly crowded and there is no simplification going into the endgame.
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