マージャン

Digital Daijisen gives late Meiji as the period for the arrival of マージャン in Japan. The Chinese source is 麻將 or 麻将, Mandarin májiàng, while Japanese often writes the game as 麻雀 and reads it マージャン. Chinese sources also connect 麻將 with 麻雀, a word that literally means sparrow and remains a game name in some varieties of Chinese. Digital Daijisen describes the Japanese game with 136 tiles and four players. The route was from China into Japanese urban play culture before the Taisho mahjong boom. Japanese adopted the tiles, table terms, and many readings, including パイ for 牌, ポン, チー, ロン, and east-south-west-north winds as トン, ナン, シャー, ペイ. During the twentieth century, Japanese rules developed their own center, especially リーチ麻雀. Modern Japanese マージャン usually means the four-player Japanese rules used in parlors, apps, manga, and tournaments. English mahjong can mean Chinese mahjong, Japanese riichi mahjong, or even the matching puzzle game called mahjong solitaire. The kanji 麻雀 is common in Japanese signs, while the kana マージャン is common in casual text. Example: リーチをかける belongs to Japanese mahjong rules, not to every game called mahjong in English.