Mahjong is unusually badly served by its own quotation culture. Search for professional mahjong wisdom in any language and most of what you find has no source at all — a great deal of it comes from manga and anime, whose characters are fictional, and much of the rest is attached to real players who never said it.
This page is an attempt to do it properly. Every quotation below is attributed to a named person, in a named place, and graded by how well we could trace it. Where we could not trace a famous line, we say so rather than quietly repeating it.
Verified
Go Kobayashi (小林剛) — on refusing superstition
Kobayashi is one of the most published strategy writers in Japanese mahjong and a long-serving M.League professional, known for a probability-first approach he calls "digital mahjong."
"I will not talk about unscientific, occult theories… the events of the next hand of mahjong cannot be predicted by the events of the previous hand."Go Kobayashi, preface to Super Digital Mahjong. English translation via natsuai.com/mahjong/digital/chapter-0.
Why it matters: the belief that a table "owes" you after a run of bad luck is one of the most expensive ideas in the game, in any ruleset.
Takaharu Ooi (多井隆晴) — on his own style
Ooi is the only holder of RMU's highest licence rank, a five-time RMU titleholder, and captain of Shibuya Abemas in M.League.
"I consider myself to be a well-balanced player with slightly more emphasis on defense."Takaharu Ooi, interviewed by Jenn Barr, ReachMahjong.com.
Why it matters: the aggressive-professional stereotype is largely a broadcast product. Even a player famous for attacking describes himself as balanced with a defensive lean.
Akina Mizuhara (瑞原明奈) — on thinking too much
Mizuhara was the 2021-22 M.League MVP and has won two team championships.
"There are quite a few situations in mahjong where insensitivity is crucial. Overthinking things can sometimes cause hesitation."Akina Mizuhara, FRIDAY DIGITAL, 2024 (official English edition).
"During the season, I envisioned it not as points but as a continuous line."Akina Mizuhara, FRIDAY DIGITAL, 2024.
Why it matters: for players who keep re-reading the card instead of committing to a line.
Reported, with the source flagged
Hisato Sasaki (佐々木寿人) — on attack as the only path
Sasaki, known as the "Demon King," is a two-time Phoenix titleholder and the 2020-21 M.League MVP. These lines come from a Tokyo Sports interview published in June 2013:
"If you keep scraping by with small losses, that adds up to a big loss. You cannot win unless you win hands. So it is not about how to avoid losing — it is about how to win."
"Unless your desire to win is stronger than your fear of dealing in, you cannot win."
"A lot of people want to hold safe tiles. I do not hold them."
Source note: originally published by Tokyo Sports (東スポWEB), June 2013. The original URL is now dead and the text survives through archive mirrors. We are publishing these as reported rather than verified, which is the honest description of their status. They are widely quoted in Japanese-language discussions of Sasaki's philosophy and they are consistent with his known style.
What we would not print
This section is here on purpose. An editor who only shows you the quotations that survived checking is hiding the more useful information.
- "If you want to win in mahjong, then you should not want to win in mahjong," attributed to Takaharu Ooi. Circulates widely in English-language communities, reportedly from the program Mahjong no Takumi. We could not locate the original clip or an episode reference. It may be genuine — it is certainly the kind of thing he says — but we will not print it as his until someone can point at the source.
- "Mahjong is ascetic training" (麻雀は修行), attributed to Kazunori Takizawa when asked what mahjong is. Traceable only to Wikipedia and blogs repeating Wikipedia, with no primary citation.
- **Any quotation from Akagi or Saki.** These are works of fiction. Their characters are among the most quoted "players" on the internet and none of them exist.
- Japanese "mahjong quotation" listicles. We checked a number of these; they are almost entirely unsourced and several attributefictional lines to real professionals.
The vocabulary nobody owns
Not everything needs an author. The following are shared professional vocabulary in Japanese mahjong — public knowledge, used without attribution, and worth knowing whether or not you ever play riichi:
- 押し引き (oshi-hiki) — push/fold judgment; the decision of whether to continue a hand.
- 降り (ori) / ベタ降り (beta-ori) — folding; folding completely and discarding only safe tiles.
- 回し打ち (mawashi-uchi) — a weaving fold: defending while still technically in the hand.
- 牌効率 (hai kōritsu) — tile efficiency; maximising the tiles you can still use.
- 受け入れ (ukeire) — the count of tiles that would improve your hand.
- シャンテン (shanten) — how many tiles you are from ready.
- 読み (yomi) — reading: 捨て牌読み (reading discards), 手牌読み (reading hands), 山読み (reading the wall).
- 筋 (suji) — the "suji" read: if 4 was discarded earlier, 1 and 7 are relatively safer against a waiting run.
- 壁 (kabe) / ノーチャンス (no-chance) — a "wall" read: if all four 5s are visible, no one can be waiting on 4-6.
- 現物 (genbutsu) — a tile a player has already discarded themselves; the safest tile against them.
- ダマテン (damaten) — keeping a ready hand silent instead of declaring it.
- 放銃率 (hōjū-ritsu) — your deal-in rate; how often you pay off someone else.
Several of these — suji, kabe, genbutsu — describe pure logic about a four-of-each-kind tile set and transfer directly to the American game, jokers notwithstanding. We go through them separately.
A suggestion
The next time somebody at your table tells you what a professional says, ask where they read it. Half the time they will not remember, and a good number of those lines turn out to belong to a manga character.