Shin’s Eye #3: Manners (part 2)
I’m Shintaro Kamimura from the Japan Professional Mahjong League.
Last time I wrote about manners and morals linked in with Mahjong in Japan.
This time I want to go into more specifics about them.
First of all, don’t forget about the greetings at the beginning and end of a match and the feeling that goes with those greetings.
Next, when the game starts, move your mountain towards the middle. The right side of the mountain should be a bit more forward than the left side. This is so that all players can draw easily and quickly. It’s based on the idea that every player should try to create a fairly and comfortable environment for each other.
After you have moved the mountain forward a bit, the top tile on the very last tier of the deck (the ones used as supplementary draws for quads) should be place on the table next to the last tile. This is a very important tile, so it should be in a place where it can’t accidentally fall and be shown to everyone.
For example, if the end tile accidentally fell off and it is a player’s winning tile, they may do an abnormal quad so that they can win on that King’s tile. The player that does this and the other players don’t feel good about this. Even if that player would have done this quad whether they saw the tile or not, it leaves a bad aftertaste.
After the game begins, discards should be lined up in rows of 6. The 7th discard should begin a new row and the 13th discard should begin a 3rd row. This way it will be easy to tell which turn each tile was discarded by each player and helps to prevent players from cheating.
As the game continues someone will win a hand and someone might discard a winner and players will have to exchange bones. When this happens you absolutely should not throw the bones when you are passing them. Even tossing them a little bit is forbidden.
People with bad manners will throw bones, click their tongue and make complaints when they lose a hand or discard another player’s winner.
These behaviors are the minimum requirements required for play in Japan.
When someone loses in a competition they show their true colors.
If you played your best and gave everything you had and still lost, it’s important to accept that defeat gracefully. Accepting the result is the basis of calm analysis, will strengthen your spirit and become the foundation of the battles to come.
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