Why are there not Japanese Grandmasters?

Hou?

OnceUponaCheckmate wrote:

I was very disappointed not to find a single book or even magazine on Hou Yifan. The staff at the book store never ever heard of her.

More than the world population. Aliens.

pdela wrote:

but there are trillions of chinese grandmaster why not japan

Japanese chess equivalent = Shogi, If any of you want a portable board with pieces I can get you one for around $7 us. If you want a more expensive one there is a town declared the official home of Shogi where you can watch people play a live game dressed as the pieces. That event is part of a yearly festival which occurs in spring. Coincidentally the plum tree blossums then also. The town sells handcrafted boards which can cost 3-30 k.

Very simple, you cannot make a living playing chess in Japan, but you can have a pretty good living playing professional chess in China. 

... and that is because ... ?

The government support professional chess players in China.

That is true, but the Chinese government support chess even though it is much less popular than go and Chinese Chess in China. 

Japanese has shogi and an IM who studied both chess and shogi claimed that shogi is a better game. The main reason is that in shogi (and xianqi too), it's very difficult to get a draw. 99% of the games have a definitive result (either a win or a loss). I think in a board game that the tie rate is more than 50% in the highest level, we need to change the ruling. For example: making stalemate obsolete. In shogi and xianqi stalemate is an automatic loss for the person getting stalemated. In chess because of a stalemate 2 knights alone (which is 6 points up in material) can't checkmate a king. A bishop and a bad rook pawn (which is 4 points up) also can't checkmate. Even when a king is behind his pawn on the 6th rank also can't checkmate the enemy king on the 8th rank in front of that pawn. If we remove stalemate rule I believe the tie rate will be much lower. 

By definition, the winning of a chess game, the opposing King must be captured.

Eliminating the stalemate rule will never happen. It's an integral part of the rules and concept of the game. Some even argue the side being stalemated should be awarded the win!  Others see the beauty of the rule, while others are not content unless a game is decisive.

And if it's a Rook pawn, the side with the pawn could end up losing if he's stupid enough!

Excellent plan. In fact, the whole game should be less about winning and losing and more about showing that the Black pieces and the White pieces can live in harmony

Because they try to avoid it. For example, they will never let a situation that 2 knights end up as the last pieces happen on the board. There are games that it will eventually be a stalemate like bishop + bad rook pawn and the players just call it a draw (one of the world championship games last November is like that). However, if stalemate rule is removed we will see that much more often and the ante will be increased much more as a single pawn now can be much more decisive. A lone rook vs a lone bishop will be a clear win. Every late game theory might be revised and it will change chess forever. 
There have been proposals to change the rule though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate#Proposed_rule_change 

Japanese have shogi, yoga, and other similar games that they like more than chess

In my junior high and high school days, I only met a few people who knew how to move pieces. Simply, chess isn't popular in Japan. For many Japanese, chess is an interior appeared in Harry Potter. 

Even Shogi become unpopular among young generation. Japanese people have a lot of amusements  instead of board games like animated cartoons or games from Nintendo. 

In Japan we play a game called Shogi. And shogi is much more popular then chess and that means there’s not a lot of people who play the game. 

Hikaru Nakamura was born in Japan

You can do that anywhere!