Japanese Mahjong
Japanese Mahjong (Japanese: 麻雀, 麻将 or マージャン; mājan), also known as riichi mahjong, is a variation of mahjong. While the basic rules to the game are retained, the variation features a unique set of rules such as riichi and the use of dora. The variant is one of a few styles, where discarded tiles are ordered rather than placed in a disorganized pile. This is primarily due to the furiten rule, which takes player discards into account. The variant has grown popularity due to anime, manga, and online platforms.
History[]
In 1924, a soldier named Saburo Hirayama brought the game to Japan.[1] In Tokyo, he started a mahjong club, parlor, and school.[1] In the years after, the game dramatically increased in popularity. In this process, the game itself was simplified from the Chinese version. Then later, additional rules were adopted to increase the complexity.[2] Mahjong, as of 2010, is the most popular table game in Japan.[3] As of 2008, there were approximately 7.6 million mahjong players and about 8,900 mahjong parlors in the country. The parlors did 300 billion yen in sales in 2008.[4] There are several manga and anime devoted to dramatic and comic situations involving mahjong (see Media).[5] Japanese video arcades have introduced mahjong arcade machines that can be connected to others over the Internet. There are also video game versions of strip mahjong.
In Japan, there are what are known as professional players, usually members of organizations that compete in internal leagues and external events with other professionals and the general public. There are over 1,700 professionals spread across a half-dozen organizations. There is no universal authority for riichi mahjong in Japan: professionals cannot dictate how mahjong parlors or amateur organizations and players operate, nor can they regulate each other since everything is left to the free market. Likewise, there is no global authority regulating riichi mahjong. A league named M.League has emerged, which takes the game and ports it as a professional sport. Players receive salary as players and wear team jerseys.[6]
Setup[]
Japanese mahjong is usually played with 136 tiles.[7] The tiles are mixed and then arranged into four walls that are each two stacks high and 17 tiles wide. 26 of the stacks are used to build the players' starting hands, 7 stacks are used to form a dead wall, and the remaining 35 stacks form the playing wall.
There are 34 different kinds of tiles, with four of each kind. Just like standard mahjong, there are three suits of tiles, pin (circles), sō (bamboo) and wan (characters), and unranked honor tiles (字牌 jihai). Honor tiles are further divided between wind tiles and dragon tiles. Some rules may have red number five tiles which work as dora that earn more han value. The flower and season tiles are omitted. Names for suit tiles follow the pattern of [number] + [suit], the numbers being Japanese pronunciations of the corresponding Chinese words.
- Pin (筒子, pinzu): Named as each tile consists of a number of circles.
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| iipin | ryanpin | sanpin | sūpin | ūpin | rōpin | chiipin | pāpin | chūpin |
- Sō (索子, sōzu): Named as each tile consists of a number of bamboo sticks that hold a hundred coins each. The face of the number one tiles is a bird.
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| iisō | ryansō | sansō | sūsō | ūsō | rōsō | chiisō | pāsō | chūsō |
- Man (萬子, wanzu, or manzu): Named as each tile consists of a number of ten thousands (萬, wan, or man; see the lower character on the tile). Originally, this was 10,000 coins made up of 100 strings of 100 coins each (see mahjong tiles). The kanji of number five usually becomes "伍" instead of "五". The modern Japanese standard uses wan as the suit's suffix, most western languages including English will use man instead. The seven in this suit would thus be called chiiwan in Japanese, but seven-man (or 7-man) in English.
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| iiwan | ryanwan | sanwan | sūwan | ūwan | rōwan | chiiwan | pāwan | chūwan |
- Wind tiles (風牌, kazehai): Named after the four cardinal directions.
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| ton (East) |
nan (South) |
shā (West) |
pei (North) |
- Dragon tiles (三元牌, sangenpai): White (白, haku), Green (發, hatsu), and Red (中, chun). Often, the face of the White dragon tiles is blank white. The kanji of the Green dragon tiles in Japan is usually