The Ultimate Guide to the ☖ (White Shogi Piece) Symbol
The ☖ symbol, known in Unicode as the White Shogi Piece, represents a playing piece used in Shogi, the traditional Japanese strategy board game often compared to chess. Characterized by its distinctive pentagonal, wedge-like shape, the "white" designation indicates that the symbol is hollow or outlined in digital typography, rather than filled.
Introduced in Unicode version 1.1 all the way back in 1993, ☖ sits at code point U+2616 within the Miscellaneous Symbols block. In physical Shogi, pieces are not actually colored black and white. Instead, they are uniform in color and rely on their pointed wedge shape to indicate which player controls them—the piece always points toward the opponent. In digital typography and publishing, however, the hollow (white) and solid (black) distinctions help creators recreate game boards and annotate play-by-play moves clearly in plain text.
You will most often spot the ☖ symbol in Japanese gaming forums, strategy apps, and digital literature discussing Shogi matches. In traditional game notation, it specifically denotes moves made by "Gote," the second player. Outside of board gaming circles, designers and internet users occasionally repurpose the ☖ symbol as an aesthetic bullet point, a minimalist house icon, or a unique geometric decoration in social media bios and usernames due to its clean, architectural shape.
Inserting the ☖ symbol into your texts, documents, or code is completely straightforward. On Windows, you can use the numeric Alt code by holding down Alt and typing 9750 on your keypad. Mac users can switch to the Unicode Hex Input keyboard and hold Option while typing 2616. For web development, using the HTML entity ☖ or ☖ will render the symbol perfectly across browsers. Of course, the easiest method for everyday messaging on a smartphone or laptop is simply to copy and paste the character directly from a symbol library.
The most direct counterpart to ☖ is the Black Shogi Piece (☗, U+2617), which features the exact same wedge shape but is completely filled in. Together, they represent the two opposing sides in digital Shogi records. If you are looking for Western equivalents, you might also explore the White Chess Pawn (♙, U+2659) or the other traditional chess symbols found slightly further down in the exact same Unicode block.