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How Some Japanese Mahjong Players Read Tiles With Their Thumbs

By David Hurley

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 24Mar2008
Word count: 518
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Modern Japanese mahjong tiles are made of a synthetic nylon material with the symbols for the suit numbers, winds and dragons stamped onto the face of the tiles. The face of every tile in a set can be distinguished not only by the design that you see, but also by the design that you can FEEL when you rub your thumb across the face of the tile!

And rub his thumb across the face of the tile is what many an expert Japanese player of mahjong likes to do during the course of a game! Yes, many an experienced player has developed the ability to "read" tiles with his thumb by rubbing it across the tile face and feeling the indentations.

It takes hours of practice to get to the point where you can accurately distinguish each of the 34 different tile faces of a standard Japanese mahjong set with your thumb, and there seems to be little advantage in being able to do so. It is a diverting party trick and it also adds some kudos to a player's game if the player can pluck a tile from the wall, announce what it is and discard it without so much as glancing at it. As mahjong is best played at a fast and furious pace, being able to read and discard tiles swiftly does help the flow of the game, but beyond that there seems little practical advantage to be gained in learning the skill.

However, there is one case where a "thumb-reader" could glean some useful information about an opponent's tile. Because mahjong players like to play fast the player who is waiting for his turn often reaches for his tile before the player to his left has discarded. By placing his thumb under the tile in readiness to lift it off the wall, a competent "thumb-reader" would be able to read the tile while waiting for his turn.

But then, when the player on his left discards a tile, if another player claims it as a "Pon" the "thumb-reader" would not in fact draw the tile from the wall and it is more than likely that the tile will go to a different player. In that case the "thumb reader" will know what the tile is and will perhaps pay attention to where it is placed in the other player's hand.

Some people might object that such a practice is a form of cheating, but others counter that it is just part parcel of the Japanese approach to the game.

It might also be pointed out that there is nothing to stop the player who received the tile from practising some deception by placing it somewhere in his hand where it does not really belong in the hope that the "thumb-reader" will draw the wrong conclusions about the make-up of his hand.

Whatever you may think about the practice of "thumb-reading", the fact that it is possible to do at all is testimony to the sensitivity of the human thumb, or "oya yubi" as it is called in Japanese.

David Hurley lives in Japan and runs a website supplying Japanese games and goods including Japanese mahjong sets and accessories direct to customers all over the world, at => Japanese-Games-Shop.com .

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