Yu Takehana Introduction
By Yu Takehana
Hi everyone. How has your mahjong been lately? Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Yu Takehana. I’m currently a member of the JPML and participating at D3 of the Phoenix league.
I will begin this column this month. I will report on riichi mahjong news especially in Japan. I know that Jenn and Garthe have been doing live update of riichi mahjong news, notably their pod-casting; however, what I will try to do instead is reporting riichi mahjong news from a Japanese point of view.
This time of my column, however, I’m writing about what I think about current riichi mahjong culture in Japan. I’d like every reach mahjong.com reader to somehow grasp my enthusiasm of diffusing riichi mahjong culture all over the world.
I do respect the work of ReachMahjong.com and I am very happy to write a column at reach mahjong.com because ReachMahjong.com is the one who made me realize that reach mahjong is not mere a table game but one of the Japanese culture. Riichi mahjong is not genuine Japanese culture but in last 5 decades or so, Japanese people made a great effort to establish riichi mahjong as single part Japanese culture. Now it is totally different from Chinese original rules of mahjong. It’s become more complicated and needs more tactics, but this is a suitable rule for Japanese people. Certainly I am one of them who became crazy about riiching.
There are 3 major pro-mahjong associations. I assume there are more than 500 pro players in Japan in total. Nevertheless, out of 500 pros, how many of them really think of riichi mahjong as Japanese culture. Moreover, is there any body who really thinks about removing the stereotype that riichi mahjong is “gambling”? In the JPML’s slogan, there is this theme of shifting riichi mahjong to a respectable game.
If those 3 big associations of riichi mahjong cooperate with one another, simply thinking, it should be easy to do activities to remove the “gambling” stereotype, but apparently this has not yes been successful. In my point of view, they are just busy and concerned with profit compared to other associations. They are not really helping one another to establish riichi mahjong culture. If this stagnation continues the next decade, riichi mahjong will become just a table game, and there will be no professional competition in it.
I’ve been thinking about this endangerment of riichi mahjong culture these days. Then I came up with this idea of “external pressure”. Thanks in part to a great effort by ReachMahjong.com now there are many riichi mahjong tournaments around the world. Riichi mahjong is surely growing its recognition. I feel that the great boom of riichi mahjong is coming soon if we push little harder. I think once we push very hard to a certain point that riichi mahjong is taken over by other nations, Japanese people would realize that riichi mahjong is in danger!! This hypothesis may sound ridiculous, but Japanese peoples’ minds are so peaceful that they won’t act until riichi mahjong is in that much danger. This is one of the reasons I am in favor of the activities of ReachMahjong.com.
But what I do not want is to let the riichi mahjong culture go extinct from this world. I want to pass on this fantastic culture to the next generation. I want to be a “sower “ for the bright future of riichi mahjong.
I am also planning to participate at the riichi mahjong tournament in Germany: European Riichi Championship 2010. So those who will participate this championship, I will look forward to riiching with you!
