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.
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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:
=> http://japanese-games-shop.com .
