Japanese Mahjong

From quite early on in my life I had always wanted to learn to play mahjong. The teeming variety and exotic charm of the tiles fascinated me. I knew that mahjong was popular in Japan so when I accepted a job at a language school in Hiroshima in 1990 I took the opportunity to find out more about the game.

I asked some of my students about the game and two of them, Noda-san and Yoshimoto-san, offered to teach me how to play. "But there are only three of us." I replied. "Isn't mahjong a four-player game?"

"We'll teach you Japanese three-player mahjong." said Noda-san, "It's a very good game."

It is indeed. Like everything else that Japan has imported over the centuries, mahjong has been adapted to suit local tastes. In fact two popular versions of mahjong are played in Japan - a somewhat modified four-player game, and the more radically transformed three-player game, which my two students taught me to play.

A standard mahjong set consists of 144 tiles divided into 36 types, each type occurring four times (4 x 36 = 144). The greater part belongs to one of the three suits, Coins, Bamboos, and Characters. The suits run from one to nine. The remaining tiles divide into three Dragons, four Winds and eight decorative bonus tiles called Flowers and Seasons.

Apart from the Flowers and Seasons, which are often discarded, the four-player game uses all of these tiles. However, the Japanese three-player variation cuts out all the tiles of the characters suit numbering from two to eight. This produces a faster, riskier game that is ideally suited for gambling - if only gambling were not illegal in Japan! If you want to try the three-player game the rules in English are available here.

Mahjong was introduced to Japan from China in the early years of the twentieth century and became a popular urban pastime. But with Japan on a war footing from 1931-1945, mahjong was actively discouraged by the authorities.

Its fortunes revived after the Second World War to such an extent that there were about 60,000 mahjong parlours (jansoh) in operation throughout the nation by 1983. Since then the game has been in something of a decline as fewer youngsters play it nowadays, so that by the early nineties the number of jansoh had fallen to something like 25,000. Nevertheless, that is still a lot of parlours! If you recognize the kanji for "mahjong" or jansoh you will not fail to notice the seemingly ubiquitous presence of signs advertising mahjong parlours wherever you go in urban Japan.

Poke your head inside the door of a typical jansoh and a vista of a brightly lit, smoke filled room crowded with men sat around square mahjong tables in their suits or rumpled shirt sleeves will most likely present itself to you. The jansoh is not the exclusive preserve of men however, and every so often one or two of the more indomitable female players are often to be seen at the tables. The scene will be completed by the "mama-san", the dominatrix who presides over the place dispensing drinks, snacks, and words of advice about the complexities of the game.

You can play either the four-player or the three-player game in a jansoh in Hiroshima. Moreover, not only are the fees quite low, the beer is cheap too! If you are lucky, mama-san will provide a range of tasty snacks or even some of her home cooking, gratis...

It is worth visiting a jansoh just to see the mahjong tables. They are sophisticated marvels of modern technology. Each table contains two sets of tiles. While one set is on the table, in play, the other set lurks in the guts of the machine. When a game is finished one of the players presses a button and the central section of the table opens up to reveal a cavity. The players push the tiles into the cavity. Another button is pressed and the central section closes. At the same moment four long narrow flaps slide open on the table and four completed walls of tiles emerge.

Meanwhile the tiles that were pushed into the table are automatically churned and shuffled and jostled into position ready for the next game. In this way players are saved the bother of shuffling the tiles and building walls after each game. As soon as one game is over the next game can commence without delay; an important consideration when you are paying for the time you spend at the table.

Of course, mahjong can also be played at home with friends or family. Mahjong sets can be purchased from many outlets and range in price from ¥2,000 to ¥35,000 and up. The game would typically be played sitting around the kotatsu - a low table with a built in heating element for winter evenings. Until a few years ago kotatsu manufacturers catered to the mahjong-playing market by finishing the underside of most kotatsu table-tops in green baize. If you wanted to play mahjong at home you could convert your kotatsu into a mahjong table simply by turning over the table-top.

Nowadays, with fewer people playing mahjong at home fewer kotatsu come with green baize undersides. Instead, rubber mats made especially for mahjong can be purchased quite easily. A rubber mat serves to keep the noise down when the tiles are shuffled.

The influence of mahjong on modern Japanese culture is testified to by the fact that in 1991 the world's first museum dedicated to the game opened on the north-east coast of the Boso peninsula, to the south of Tokyo.

But with fewer young people taking up the game, does mahjong have a future? The Director General of the museum, Kyoichiro Noguchi certainly thinks so. Indeed, his vision for the game is full of lofty ambition. He expressed the hope that "Mahjong will contribute to the cultural exchange and peace of the world" [sic]. I don't know about that, but I am sure that the game will be popular in Japan for the foreseeable future, even if it never reaches the heights that it did in the early postwar years.

The Japanese word "yakitori" means "grilled bird" and refers to a Japanese type of skewered chicken. Typically, chicken thigh meat is cut up into bite-sized pieces and skewered on a bamboo skewer with pieces of chopped spring onlon, then barbecued over an open grill.

In a yakitori izakakaya (a Japanese-style pub-restaurant) you'll be able to order a wide range of skewered chicken bits as well - heart, liver, wing, gizzard, skin, cartilege, breast, and chicken meatballs too, as well as a range of other skewered and grilled meat, offal and vegetables.

But the skewered bird on the Japanese mahjong yakitori tessera is not a chicken. There is another bird that gets the skewer in Japan, and that is the sparrow. Typically, your unfortunate Japanese sparrow is plucked (!!) and skewered whole. I will go so far as to admit that I have been served skewered sparrow, but I have never actually ordered the dish. Nor have I eaten it. The smallest bird that I have ever indulged my appetite upon is pigeon, and even then I limited the field of action to a mere nibble upon the breast if you see what I mean.

Moving swiftly on to the role of the yakitori tessera in Japanese mahjong, it is to indicate that a player has not yet succeeded in completing a hand.

At the beginning of the game each player places a yakitori tessera on the table to his right. When a player completes a hand he removes the tessera from the table. Any player who has not removed his Yakitori tessera from the table by the end of the game has to pay a predetermined fine to the other players in addition to the amount that he has to pay out for losing the game.

In short, he has been "skewered" like a barbequed sparrow.

You can purchase several different styles of Japanese yakitori tesserae from this (English language) site:

Japanese-Mahjong.com

Do you love playing mahjong? Do you appreciate the unique atmosphere and conventions of the game? Do you enjoy handling the tiles and equipement?

If so, and if you paid more than $600 for either your TV set, stereo system or exercise equipment, you should consider having a genuine top quality Japanese mahjong set shipped by Express Mail direct to you from Japan.

You'll have more fun and see more action than watching TV, listening to your stereo or guilt-tripping over your exercise equipment.

Even the most prestigious top-of-the-range Japanese mahjong set plus express shipping straight out of Japan will still cost less than $600 - and give you a lifetime of pleasure long after the expensive television and stereo set are obsolete... (let's cast a veil over the likely fate of the exercise equipment).

Why Japanese mahjong sets?

Firstly, because a Japanese set doesn't treat you like a blithering imbecile and mollycoddle you with numbers and letters in the top right corners of each tile. Every tile is as it was always intended to be, pure Asian design.

I mean, how difficult is it for anybody who likes mahjong to learn to use genuine Japanese tiles? How difficult is it to recognise symbols for 1 to 9, and about six other Chinese/Japanese characters (North, South, East, West, Red Dragon and Green Dragon)? Give your brain a tonic and keep it young!

A second reason to buy a Japanese set is because even in an economy set the mahjong tiles are well made with sharp character definition. But the more prestigious the set the heavier the tile, the clearer or more intricately worked the design.

You can feel the difference the moment you pick up the tiles of a deluxe set. Their weight militates against haste and flightiness, their caressing silkiness soothes your hand and smooths the flow of your game...

A top of the range Japanese set will be appreciated by the most discriminating of players. Once you have seen and handled these tiles you will find it difficult to go back to the tacky mass produced "el-cheapo" tiles.

If you want to know more about the difference between well made Japanese tiles and the shoddier examples that you can find elsewhere, check this article I recently wrote on the subject:

"Mahjong Sets: The Ugly, The Good & the Beautiful"

So where can you get the best sets? Actually, even in Japan, while you can find well produced sets in many outlets, the prestigious sets are harder to come by.

One set, now very difficult to obtain, has been hand finished with genuine bamboo tilebacks. Obviously that sort of thing cannot be mass produced.

Another set, a deluxe model produced by Nintendo, brilliantly mimics the grain of an ivory mahjong set. Famous as Nintendo is, this set is not to be found in run-of-the-mill toy and game shops.

However, a range of sets can be ordered from an English site that operates out of Hiroshima, Japan. Each set is carefully packaged and shipped by Express Mail Service to virtually any location on the globe...

Site: http://japanese-games-shop.com