The Underlying Logic of Riichi and Chinese Official Mahjong, Part 1: Payment Systems

Japanese Riichi Mahjong and Chinese Official Mahjong are two of the most complex and competitive mahjong rulesets today. Each has a large community of enthusiasts around the world, representing the highest level of development of this old game into a modern tabletop game. Yet although both follow the basic winning structure of four melds and a pair, they feel completely different in play. Players proficient in one often struggle when trying the other: familiar strategies and ways of thinking stop working, and may even have the opposite effect.

Players familiar with both will point out that Riichi pursues concealed-hand tile efficiency, whereas Chinese Official Mahjong centers on assembling enough scoring patterns to qualify for a win. Full-discarder payment and furiten make defense crucial in Riichi, while triple payment for self-draw encourages offense in Chinese Official Mahjong. These observations are correct, but a question remains: why did a game that originated in China and spread to Japan develop such different temperaments and styles?

This article explores the proposition that behind these visible differences, the decisive underlying factors are differences in the aesthetic preferences and values of the Chinese and Japanese peoples. The topic is planned as five installments:

• Payment Systems
• Winning Requirements
• Design Principles
• The Rules System (I)
• The Rules System (II)
• Reform

The emergence of full-discarder payment in Japanese mahjong

Normally, a discussion of a ruleset should begin with its winning requirements, since these determine the overall approach to constructing a hand. For Japanese mahjong, however, we should first examine full-discarder payment, its first original rule and its most distinctive mechanism. No other regional mahjong outside Japan currently uses this system. It marked Japanese mahjong's departure from the traditional Chinese rules framework and helped give it a style entirely unlike that of other regions.

Full-discarder payment means that on a discard win, the player who deals in alone pays the entire amount that would otherwise be shared among three losers. Mahjong reached Japan during the later period of classical mahjong, when minipoint scoring and the dealer-double payment system were still used. Whether the win was by self-draw or discard, all three losers paid according to the dealer/non-dealer relationship. This had some unreasonable consequences. A discarder bore no additional responsibility and could recklessly deal in at the expense of the other two players. Moreover, because a losing dealer paid twice as much as a non-dealer, non-dealers could collude by dealing into one another's hands, facilitating cheating and disadvantaging the dealer.

According to the research of Japanese mahjong scholars Ryō Asami and Makoto Fukuchi, Japanese players took a different path from the Chinese development discussed below. They extended the responsibility-payment rule to ordinary discard wins, making the discarder the sole payer. This reflected a shared conviction:

“If you deal in, you should take responsibility yourself.”

The rule first emerged around 1931, the sixth year of Shōwa. It was not imposed by an official body but arose among players and spread rapidly. The authoritative Japan Mahjong League still insisted on the traditional three-payer system, but its conservative position could not stop the popular spread of full-discarder payment. Just one year later, in 1932, the league had to introduce one-person payment internally as its B rules. It then spread throughout the league and quickly displaced the original rules. By the third year, 1933, three-person payment had been abolished, and payment by the discarder alone became the official standard that has continued ever since.

Since then, full-discarder payment has been a core mechanism of Japanese mahjong. It is no longer treated as a debatable question, but as a self-evident principle.

The Japanese values behind full-discarder payment

Despite resistance from the industry's authoritative organization, full-discarder payment overturned the existing practice and became the sole standard within three years. Such rapid change is unusual in a society known for conservatism. This history suggests that the system must have resonated deeply with something in the Japanese national character.

Japanese researchers have considered this question. One explanation is:

“Having to pay when someone else deals in does not fit the Japanese national character.”

In my view, this national characteristic is essentially the long-established social principle of not causing trouble for others.

Anyone familiar with Japanese culture knows how deeply this principle shapes thought and behavior. Children are taught not to inconvenience others, and sumimasen is among the most frequently used expressions in everyday life. This value helps explain the emphasis on rules, order, politeness, and orderly public spaces.

The other side of not troubling others is expecting others not to trouble you. Whoever creates a problem should therefore bear full responsibility. Applied to mahjong, a player's deal-in not only prevents that player from continuing to build a hand; it also stops the other two players from winning and obliges them to pay. It thus becomes an act that causes trouble for others. Against this cultural background, the logic that whoever deals in must pay everything—and therefore the full-discarder payment system—is a direct expression of the value of not troubling others. This helps explain its rapid acceptance throughout Japanese mahjong.

From discarder-double payment to triple payment for self-draw in China

Faced with the same problems in classical minipoint scoring and dealer-double payments, Chinese Old Style mahjong gradually developed the discarder-double system. The discarder took the dealer's former role: paying twice as much when dealing in and receiving twice as much when acting as their own supplier of the winning tile, namely on self-draw. A self-draw winner received six times the hand value, while a discard winner received four times, making self-draw worth 1.5 times as much. This was the first payment-system multiplier for self-draw, albeit only 1.5. Earlier, self-draw had simply earned two minipoints, like edge, closed, and pair waits, with little overall effect.

At the same time, Chinese scoring abandoned minipoints and shifted entirely to fan-based scoring, beginning a process of increasing pattern values. Edge, closed, and pair waits, and All Chows, which had previously involved minipoints, became patterns that doubled the score. Self-draw likewise rose from two minipoints to one fan. Some scholars suggest that this fan resulted from a misunderstanding of the one fan for a concealed self-draw, or from treating the double payments collected from each player in the discarder-double system as one fan. This misunderstanding doubled the existing 1.5-fold payment advantage, making self-draw receipts three times those of a discard win. This was the original form of triple payment for self-draw. See Rewarding Self-Draw Does Not Mean Overrewarding It.

At that stage, the threefold result combined discarder-double payments with one fan for self-draw. All three losers still paid for either kind of win: four times each on self-draw, versus twice from the discarder and once from each other loser on a discard win. Later, possibly under Japanese influence or to prevent collusion in gambling, regional Chinese rules widely adopted a more direct arrangement: each loser paid once on self-draw, while only the discarder paid once on a discard win. The threefold difference now came entirely from payments. Some regions subsequently added self-draw again as an independent doubling pattern, ultimately producing the extreme sixfold self-draw rule. With such a large difference between self-draw and discard-win receipts, passing up a discard win to gamble on self-draw became the best strategy in many rulesets.

The Chinese values behind triple payment for self-draw

China never had national or local mahjong associations to establish and regulate rules, so their development was entirely popular and spontaneous. Regional rules commonly reward self-draw threefold or sixfold. Even Chinese Official Mahjong, officially formulated in 1998 and offering the lowest self-draw reward among Chinese rules, still uses a fixed base payment plus triple payment for self-draw. See What Does “Triple Payment for Self-Draw” Really Mean in Chinese Official Mahjong? The growth from two minipoints to 1.5 times, three times, and in some places six times must also reflect something that resonates with Chinese values.

Chinese values have long praised initiative and personal effort: as the saying goes, just as heaven moves unceasingly, a person of character should strive without rest. Playing mahjong is like pursuing an undertaking: people make the plans, but heaven determines success. Planning means actively calling chows and pungs to reach a ready hand quickly. Success ultimately depends on luck, whether through self-draw or an opponent's discard. An opponent's deal-in mainly reflects their mistake; a self-draw is good fortune bestowed by heaven.

In mahjong, self-draw accounts for only one quarter of wins. When building a large hand, opponents may also infer its shape and withhold dangerous tiles, making winning less likely. From the Chinese mahjong perspective, self-draw is therefore pure good fortune. Even when others defend by holding your needed tiles, you can still draw the winner yourself. Such exceptional luck leaves no grounds for complaint.

Chinese values recognize this good fortune, so self-draw merits an additional fan. Rewarding self-draw means rewarding success achieved through one's own effort. From the initial 1.5-fold reward to triple payment and even the clearly excessive sixfold regional reward, Chinese players generally accept it because succeeding through one's own efforts accords with their values: a self-draw victory symbolizes persistent self-improvement; rewarding it affirms both effort and good fortune.

Full-discarder payment and self-draw: different values

The treatment of dealing in and self-draw reveals a fundamental difference in Chinese and Japanese values.

Japanese thinking often starts from others and uses others as its reference point, whereas Chinese thinking often starts from oneself and uses oneself as its reference point.

Under Japan's principle of not troubling others, dealing in is a discard that inconveniences everyone else. Once it troubles others, the discarder must bear full responsibility. This takes the shared consequences of a deal-in to an extreme, turning them into total liability. Chinese thinking, by contrast, emphasizes individual effort and responsibility for one's own behavior. This applies not only to the discarder but also to the two other losers: everyone must bear their own responsibility, paying their own share rather than unconditionally taking on someone else's. From this perspective, dealing in simply reflects poor skill or bad luck. Losing and paying for oneself is understandable, and asking the discarder to pay somewhat more is reasonable—but why pay for other people?

Consequently, full-discarder payment never emerged in Chinese mahjong. Even when preventing collusion or Japanese influence led regional rules to require payment by the discarder alone, the discarder paid only their own share, never the other players' shares. Three payers on self-draw and one on a discard win is also the source of the widespread Chinese triple-payment system. To distinguish it from full-discarder payment, some call it “half-discarder payment.” Personally, I find “own-share-only discarder payment” more apt: the discarder pays only their own portion.

While triple payment for self-draw is widely accepted in China, self-draw has no comparable value or status in Japan. It still receives the two minipoints inherited from classical scoring, the same as edge, closed, and pair waits. When mahjong reached Japan, it was still in the late classical era of dealer-double payments and minipoint scoring, before discarder-double payments and an extra fan for self-draw had evolved. By accepting full-discarder payment and penalizing dealing in, Japanese mahjong left no separate expression of self-draw reward in its payment system. Specifically, the discarder must cover all three losers' payments, calculated from what the winner would receive on self-draw. Dealing into a dealer costs six times the basic points, matching a dealer's self-draw; dealing into a non-dealer costs four times, matching that player's self-draw. If self-draw were doubled, the corresponding discard payment based on that self-draw value would also double, canceling the relative benefit. A brief aside: Japanese mahjong does award one han for concealed self-draw, but this rewards concealment rather than self-draw, since concealed discard wins also gain ten minipoints, while open self-draws gain neither that han nor that concealment bonus. This is examined in the discussion of winning requirements. Thus self-draw has no special value in Japanese mahjong comparable to its Chinese status.

Values are preferences, not a hierarchy

From discarder liability to self-draw rewards, the two histories reflect fundamental cultural differences: Japanese mahjong emphasizes not troubling others, so the discarder bears all responsibility and self-draw becomes part of the full-discarder payment system without extra value. Chinese mahjong emphasizes individual effort and rewarding success, so self-draw receives a higher reward while each loser remains responsible only for themselves.

From a purely scientific perspective on reasonable game design, Japanese full-discarder payment is excessively harsh on the discarder, while Chinese triple payment excessively rewards self-draw. Yet, as discussed above, these differences are not merely mechanical; they express deeper differences in national values.

As the saying goes, different people like different things. Both sets of values have their own rationale and supporters. The question is not which payment system is fairer or more reasonable, but which values resonate with a given group. It is therefore unsurprising that many Chinese players find Japanese full-discarder payment uncomfortable, while many Japanese players cannot accept Chinese triple payment for self-draw. Some Chinese players identify with Japanese mahjong's philosophy and accept it more readily; conversely, some Japanese players are interested in and willing to adopt Chinese mahjong.

Analyzing the national values behind the rules helps us understand their design philosophies more deeply.

References:

• Ryō Asami: The Characteristics and Prospects of Japanese Mahjong.
• Makoto Fukuchi: The Road to Modern Mahjong.