Last week, we published The Meaning of Mahjong, a look at the history of the game, the current craze for it, who is playing in North Carolina, and what it all means.
We caught up with the piece’s author, Sayaka Matsuoka, to talk about how she wrote the story, what she learned, and whether she’s now playing herself.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me a little about how you got interested in Mahjong. Did you ever play it as a kid, or did anyone in your family?
I didn’t play as a kid, but vaguely remember hearing about how my grandpa would play mahjong when we took trips back to Japan in the summers. Called Riichi there, he would go play weekly sometimes.
For this story, what got me interested actually was seeing accessories for sale at my local post office. The pieces were pastel and cutesy, almost Lilly Pulitzer-like, and I wondered what that was about. A few months later, I started seeing mahjong being talked about online on social media. That’s when I realized it was becoming a national trend.
But one of the biggest things that struck me was the demographic of people who appeared to be playing. Rather than Asian folks, I saw a lot of middle-aged white women sharing and playing. That raised a lot of questions for me. Like, why, how, when?
Once you got interested in it as a current trend, how did the story evolve for you?
At first, I pitched the story as a simple trend piece looking at what the rise in mahjong looks like locally. But as I started researching more and more, I found a lot of nuanced conversations happening online, especially amongst the Asian community, about cultural exchange and appropriation.
That led me to dive deeper, which resulted in lots of conversations about the game’s history, its introduction to the U.S., the initial commodification of the game, and the current trends among white upper-middle-class communities. Then, I uncovered the layered history of the game’s connection to the Jewish American community, which added another dimension to the piece.
A lot of your best work takes on issues of identity and culture. How and why do you think that has become such a rich vein for you?
I think as an Asian American woman growing up in the South, I’ve always been curious about the intersections of identity and culture. In a lot of ways, my identity is split between being an American and Japanese. So a lot of that has informed the way I see the world and what kinds of things pull at my curiosity. Also, I enjoy learning about culture—particularly ones outside of my own, because I know how rich the cultures I belong to are. It’s a fascinating window into humanity and can unveil many things about people.
What surprised you most in the writing of this story?
The thing that surprised me most was probably the parallels between what took place when mahjong was first introduced to the U.S. 100 years ago and its current rise in popularity. To prepare for writing this piece, I read Annelise Heinz’s book, Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture, which was a fascinating and insightful read. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the game’s history.
The game was brought here by a white, middle-class American businessman who advertised the game as “exotic” to sell it to other white, middle-to-upper class people. At the same time, there were racist notions about Asians, particularly the Chinese, in the aftermath of the passing of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Those parallels exist today with the ICE raids, the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and the “chinamaxxing” trend. We always say history repeats itself, but I was struck by how clearly these echoes of the past are being felt today.
I was also struck by how many different perspectives and ties people have to mahjong. For many Asian Americans, the game is tied to family and heritage. For Jewish Americans, that is also the case. For newer players, it’s more about the socialization and the commodification of the game.
But as with other cultural products—like hip hop for example—mahjong is undergoing a change. It won’t stay confined to one culture forever. And seeing how that’s creating interesting conversations now is fascinating to watch.
Did writing this story get you interested in learning mahjong yourself?
It did! I actually have been looking to see if I could find a used set on Facebook Marketplace. I have a Jewish sister-in-law and was asking her if her family plays. Turns out, most of the women in her family do so. We’re going to try to learn the game together and play during our annual family beach trip.
I got a chance to learn how to play American mahjong at the Mahjong 101 event mentioned in the story, but would love the opportunity to learn Chinese mahjong as well. I plan on eventually going to the Namu open play sessions this year!