Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View

I have a very vivid childhood memory, of falling asleep smelling the haze of cigarette smoke in the house and listening to a combination of mumbled chatter broken by occasional raised voices and loud laughter, mixed with the clinking of glasses with ice, and the popping of beer cans.

Mah Jong's distictive tiles.

Along with the party noises was the soothing sounds of the game that brought these grownups to our house: The clicking and clacking of bamboo-backed rectangular ivory tiles spread in front of each player and small ivory sticks being thrown on the table. You see, my parents didn't play poker or other card games. They played Mah Jong.

Mah Jong is an ancient Chinese game that some speculate was created by the philosopher and teacher Confucius, but was more likely an evolution of several ancient games played in China. The game spread centuries ago throughout Asia, with variants of rules developed in each country. In 1893, a Mah Jong set was brought to the US for an exposition in Chicago; the same year the Smithsonian Institution wrote a paper describing the game and calling it "Chinese Dominoes."

In 1920, a simplified set of rules was published in English and sets imported with Roman numerals on the tiles, and the game caught on as a fad during the decade under various names including Mah Jongg, Mah Junk, Mah Chang, Man-Chu, Ma Cheuk, and Pung Chow. Played for money, it's an enticing gambler's game.

If you've seen the terrific movie " Joy Luck Club" or read Amy Tan's novel, you've been introduced to Mah Jong and how it brings friends together. I assume my parents played the Japanese style of Mah Jong, but I can't tell you how that differs from any other country's rules. I never learned to play the game.

This how Go can look from above.

Last week, the Denver Post ran a fascinating article about the game's popularity today, with various groups of both Asians and non-Asians meeting regularly to play. Erin and I both have childhood memories of being lulled to sleep by the sound of our parents playing the game, so we've wanted to find a set and try to learn the game. Unfortunately, my mother threw out her set years ago.

The holiday season brings up thoughts of games because they're a staple of gift-giving (more board games are bought and played during December and January than any other time of the year), and also because there is such an emphasis on family and community during the season. What's more natural than bringing out a game to play after a tummy-filling feast? OK, you can turn on the football game, but for those who aren't armchair quarterbacks, a few rounds of a fun game can be a great way to spend a winter's day.

Along from the many Milton-Bradley and Parker Bros. Games I played, I remember other Asian games. Another that I recall from my childhood is Go, a game of strategy that also was developed - naturally - in China as Wei Ch'i and is known as Baduk in Korea. Along with Backgammon, Go is the oldest game in the world still played in its original form. Buddhist priests brought the game to Japan centuries ago, where it was refined and embraced by the samurai class of the Tokugawa shogunate era. By the 1800s, the game had filtered down to the general population and has remained popular ever since. There are annual national tournaments and Japanese newspapers run columns on the game.

If you've seen the terrific movie "Joy Luck Club" or read Amy Tan's novel, you've been introduced to Mah Jong.

My memories of Go are of silent, concentrating players, brows furrowed, sitting on tatami mats hunched over a thick wooden chopping block of a playing board criss-crossed with a fine grid of lines. The game is said to be more challenging than chess or bridge, so that explains the concentration. The two players moved around beautifully-formed stone playing pieces that looked like large M&M chocolate candies, only in a matte-finished black and white, 180 white and 181 black ones to a set.

A proper Go set is a work of art in itself. But it seemed like such a serious game that as a kid, I stayed away from it. I much preferred my own kind of childish board games like Candyland, Clue, The Game of Life, Trouble, Stratego, and of course, good old Chess and Checkers.

Another Japanese game, but one I wasn't familiar with until recently, is Hanafuda, a traditional card game. The game is sometimes called "The Flower Game" because each suit is represented by a different type of flower, such as wisteria, cherry blossom, iris or plum blossom ("hana" is Japanese for flower). I didn't grow up playing Hana, so the first time I saw the beautifully-illustrated little cards that make up a Hanafuda set was after I met Erin, who's played it with her family all her life.

My favorite Hanafuda card.

She tried to teach me the rules and we've played a couple of times. But I never quite got the hang of the game until after Thanksgiving, when we played it with her family. This time, when it began to make more sense to me, and I began to feel more competitive. It helped that I actually won a couple of rounds!

The one other game I recall from my childhood in Japan is Chinese Checkers. We had a set that was made of colorful stamped steel decorated in a star pattern, with indentations throughout the board where we placed marbles as playing pieces. Unfortunately, Chinese Checkers had nothing to do with China at all.

The origins of Chinese Checkers is in a Victorian-era European board game called Halma, where the object of the game was to move your playing pieces to the opposite corner of the square board. A German company created a star-shaped playing board for Halma, and in 1928 an American version was sold under the name Chinese Checkers (probably to ride to coat-tails of the Mah Jong fad then underway!).

Except for Hanafuda, which is new to me, I haven't seen the other games in years. They still evoke warm memories of my childhood, and stir the hope that I'll someday own a Mah Jong and Go set, and be able to play them as adults.

Games have the wonderful ability to being people together, even if only for a few hours. But these days, such human contact is something to be cherished. It's worth bringing out your old games for the holidays.

ARCHIVES

THE GAMES (ASIAN) PEOPLE PLAY

Copyright 1998-2002 by Gil Asakawa -- not for use without permission.
Contact me if you'd like to run "Nikkei View" in your publication.
Thanks for reading!

ARCHIVES

THE GAMES (ASIAN) PEOPLE PLAY

Copyright 1998-2002 by Gil Asakawa -- not for use without permission. Contact me if you'd like to run "Nikkei View" in your publication. Thanks for reading!

Copyright 1998-2002 by Gil Asakawa -- not for use without permission.
Contact me if you'd like to run "Nikkei View" in your publication.
Thanks for reading!