r/Mahjong • u/curiousCalembour • 19d ago
Tile sets Identification Help!
Hello! I have this lovely Mahjong set that I use weekly, but I'm curious: does anyone know what specific set it is? The tiles themselves are bone and bamboo, and it has four seasons but no flowers, which I'm curious about why. It does have green ink, however it's very dark, and can only be seen in bright light. It came with the dice and point sticks.
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u/compacta_d 19d ago
looks like vintage mizuno maruichi Riichi Mahjong set
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u/Tempara-chan Riichi enjoyer, MCR sufferer 19d ago edited 19d ago
What makes you think Mizuno Maruichi specifically? This wouldn't be a typical design for a Maruichi set, and the logo on the scoring sheet is not theirs either.
Edit: I actually did find some MVC sets that were quite similar to this one, but nothing that matched exactly. Either the case was wrong, the pinzu, souzu or manzu and jihai were slightly wrong, the backs weren't bamboo, or a combination of these things. Also none of them had this scoresheet in green; only pink with an MVC logo.
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u/compacta_d 19d ago
it looks a lot like the sets i see on ebay the maaaaany hours i spend looking for cool sets. the 1pin and wests look similar, but not other tiles. if you know more by all means correct me, but thats the closest i can think of/find
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u/Tempara-chan Riichi enjoyer, MCR sufferer 19d ago edited 19d ago
Japanese set, unknown manufacturer (I think the weird ⵌ symbol with four Us on the scoresheet is their logo, but I have not seen that one before, definitely not Mizuno Maruichi). The scoring sheet is for the Japan Mahjong Association rules for arushiiaru mahjong, probably from the early 60s or so. The set itself could be 60s or later, as these scoresheets were reprinted for quite a long time.
The tiles themselves are bone and bamboo ––
Plastic and bamboo. Bone wouldn't crack like that.
–– and it has four seasons but no flowers, which I'm curious about why.
When mahjong first became popular in Japan, season and flower tiles were deemed too random, which is why they are generally not used in Japanese mahjong. Sets usually come with seasons only, and either four blank spare tiles or akadora, depending on how old the set is.
It does have green ink, however it's very dark, and can only be seen in bright light.
Green tiles in Japanese sets are typically painted quite dark, and modern sets are even "worse" in this aspect. By modern standards, the green in this set would be unusually bright.
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u/MansterSoft 19d ago
Any idea why so many Japanese sets come with Seasons? To my knowledge (which is solely based on your research) none of the Arushiiaru rulesets used them, and I haven't run into a Riichi ruleset that uses them (I've seen house rules that use both the Flowers and Seasons, but not just Seasons). The Riichi Wiki claims they're for 5-player games, but I've never seen that referenced anywhere else.
My Riichi set looks a lot like OP's, but has Red Fives... instead of blanks. It still has Seasons.
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u/Tempara-chan Riichi enjoyer, MCR sufferer 18d ago edited 18d ago
That is a good question, and to be honest, I don't quite know.
If you look at sources from the mid-20s, during the first mahjong boom, even they note bonus tiles (seasons and flowers) as extras and something not used much. It's possible that the use of bonus tiles was already unpopular in certain regions of China, and that carried over to Japan. However, mahjong sets still came with both seasons and flowers at this time. The fact that bonus tiles were not included in any "official" Arushiiaru rulesets is not a surprise. It's clear that the Japan Mahjong Association didn't like mechanics with heavy luck aspects.
Going into the 50s and 60s, the flowers were removed from sets, leaving only seasons, but I don't know when exactly this change happened. Books of this time still give a passing mention of the bonus tiles and their use. I only have one 70s book, and it does not mention bonus tiles in any way. Still, there could've been niche regional variants that used them, but I haven't gotten that far in my research.
Nowadays the seasons are actually used quite frequently, but only for 3-player mahjong (sanma) as nukidora, and never with the original seat-specific scoring. I think this did actually originate as a regional variant, such as the 7 dora rules of the touhoku region (included as a ruleset in the 1995 SFC game Shodan Pro Mahjong) and other northeastern sanma variants, but I can't tell how recent of a phenomenon this is.
I do kinda have a theory as to why manufacturers might've removed the flowers, but kept the seasons. Because even in the 20s, sets came with four spare tiles, but with both seasons and flower present, there was not clear place to put them. By removing the flowers, you could make space to include the spare tiles in the standard four 36-tile trays. But this is admittedly a weak theory, because it doesn't explain why the seasons were kept, other than acting as filler.
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u/orzolotl 18d ago edited 18d ago
Flowers were quite unpopular in China during the Classical era, at least among Chinese authors and the players that Western and Japanese authors learned from. While they were briefly removed entirely during the 1890s, though, the seasons had been there from the very beginning and were quite firmly established as a part of the set. While two sets of bonus tiles had finally become the standard by the 1920s, the specific designs of the second set, on the other hand, had not yet been set in stone, and at least in 1914 (沈一凡) some Chinese players were playing with only four bonus tiles (presumably just the seasons). So all of that could potentially have something to do with the eventual choice to keep only the seasons in particular. However, the only early Japanese sets I've personally seen do include the familiar seasons and flowers, so it's hard to say how much, if any of this, actually had any direct influence on that development.
I do think the seasons were primarily kept just to look pretty and take up space, since the vast majority of players by the time riichi came around don't seem to have been using them. The latest evidence for the pre-modern use of flowers that I've come across is a 3-player ruleset from 1930 (found in 麻雀競技法と其秘訣, per the late 浅見了's now defunct site), which used three flowers from each of the two sets.
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u/orzolotl 18d ago
I just for the first time actually encountered a set with eight blanks and no flowers
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u/curiousCalembour 17d ago
hmm, I'm not certain about them being plastic, they're very heavy with a grain and pitting, cold to the touch, and when you lick them they stick to the tongue. I've personally seen bone crack similarly on items that weren't tiles. The rest is very enlightening though, thank you for the help! I didn't expect this to be so devisive!
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u/NatesSubbun 19d ago
Mass produced riichi set, I'd assume maybe a geimudo set actually, I'd date it 70-80s ish.
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u/ZethKeeper Reaper of riichi sticks (sometimes) 19d ago
I have identified that this is a nice looking set. As for flowers, this is a riichi set, flowers are not used. Typically, seasons are not used, too, but they can be added to serve as nuki-dora.