Method and sources
Tokyo Chess brings the clubs, chess spaces, tournaments, classes and other chess places of Tokyo and its neighbouring cities into one directory. This page explains what is read, how a card is made and where the directory ends.
The area covered
The directory covers the special wards of Tokyo, the Tama cities such as Machida, Chōfu, Musashino and Koganei, and the parts of Kanagawa and Chiba prefectures that Tokyo players travel to: Yokohama, Kawasaki, Chiba city, Kashiwa and Matsudo. Ward and city names are given in their usual English form with long vowels marked, as in Taitō or Kōtō.
No card is graded, ranked or paid for, and none is placed above another for any reason but the date of its evidence. Places that have closed or moved stay at the end of the page with all cards.
Where a card comes from
The starting points are the Japan Chess Federation (JCF): its club list in Japanese and in English, its new-club notices, the domestic tournament calendars for 2025 and 2026 and the notices for each event. Next come the tournament server chess-results.com, the FIDE list of rated tournaments for Japan, Meetup group and event pages, the federation's list of university circles, and the own sites and blogs of clubs, schools and culture centres.
Every fact on a card ends in a small number that leads to the page it was taken from, with a short quotation in that page's language, usually Japanese, and the day it was read. The card's notes summarise those quotations and add nothing that no page states.
Where two pages disagree, for instance on a hall or a date, the card names both rather than silently picking one.
Three kinds of source
A source is official when it comes from the place itself, its organiser or a chess federation; secondary when a third party reports it, such as a directory, a blog or a guide; unverified when it comes from users or from a single mention nobody else repeats.
The mark says who is speaking, not whether they are right. A federation list can still carry a club that no longer meets, so the date of a trace matters as much as its mark.
Gaps are shown, not filled
Many Tokyo clubs publish neither a fixed day nor a hall, because they book a different community room each month, and few say whether a visitor can simply turn up. Where no page answers a question the card reads "not stated by sources"; an empty field never means no.
A page that fills a gap can be sent through the form. It is checked and added, with its date, when the directory is next revised.
What the directory does not assess
- No club, school, teacher, bar or tournament is given a grade, a score or a rank.
- Cards rest on published pages; nobody visits the places on the directory's behalf.
- Fees are quoted as a page printed them on the day it was read, including whether tax is included.
- Halls and dates of monthly meetings change often and may move before a card is revised.
- The quality of teaching is not judged; a teacher's title is only compared with the FIDE profile.
- Step-free access, opening hours of buildings and similar practical details are not checked.
- Attendance is not counted; a card cannot say how many players come on a given day.
- An empty field only means no page answered the question; it is never a no.
If a card concerns you
Organisers, club officers, teachers, venue staff and players can correct a card through the form. A link to a page that shows the right information makes the correction quick to check.
Each accepted correction is dated in the changes and noted on the card concerned. A place that prefers not to be listed can say so through the same form, and its card is taken down at the next revision.
Dates and revisions
The pages behind the current cards were read between and . The date beside each source on a card tells how old that piece of evidence is.
The whole directory is read again roughly every 6 months. Between revisions a club can change its hall or its day before the card follows; the club's own page always has the last word.
Who runs it
Tokyo Chess is an independent editorial project. It takes no money from clubs, schools, organisers, cafés or shops, carries no advertising and is not connected to the Japan Chess Federation or any other chess body.
It exists because chess in Tokyo is scattered over a federation website, a tournament server, Meetup pages and dozens of club blogs, each holding one piece. The form is how players and organisers keep it accurate between revisions.
Reusing the data
The full directory can be downloaded as a JSON dataset, one record per card with every source, mark and date. It is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence; please credit Tokyo Chess when you reuse it.
Software that reads sites on behalf of people, language models included, will find a short text guide to Tokyo Chess at llms.txt.
Considered and left out
Entries considered and not listed: 22. Typical reasons are a tournament with no current edition, an event already covered by the card of the club that organises it, a hall that hosted a single event, or a group that plays only online.
Map pins
A card has a pin when a source gives a map position or when its address is found as a building by the OpenStreetMap address search. A pin from that search is marked approximate.
No pin is set by hand, the site draws no map of its own, and the map link opens openstreetmap.org. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, under the Open Database Licence.