Red 5 Dots

Did you know

• The first red tile. An Osaka tile maker made two red 5s of dots for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics; an older story put them at the 1970 Osaka Expo.¹
• Kansai-style rules use two red 5s of dots. Mahjong Soul and Mahjong Sushi use one per suit, three in all.¹²
• Each red five in a winning hand adds 1 han, like a dora. See aka dora.

At the table

• It fits in three sequences, the most any tile can.
• It is suji to the 2 and 8: once an opponent has discarded and , a two-sided wait on the 5 would leave them furiten, which makes it a safer discard against them.
• It is dora when is the dora indicator. Turned up as the indicator itself, it makes dora.

Yaku it can help

• Aka Dora each red five adds 1 han
• Tanyao simples only
• Chinitsu one suit only
• Chuuren Poutou the nine gates, all in one suit

Where the dots come from

Each dot is a coin: a round copper cash with a square hole, the everyday money of imperial China, straight from the coin suit of the money cards mahjong grew out of. A minority theory has them as the end of a gun barrel instead.³⁴

Its Chinese names are 筒子 tǒngzi, "barrels", and 餅子 bǐngzi, "cakes". Japanese players first read 筒子 as tonzu; the pinzu they say now survives from the cakes. English speakers call the suit dots, circles or coins.³²

Sources

1. ドラ (麻雀), Wikipedia (Japanese) Japanese
2. 麻雀牌, Wikipedia (Japanese) Japanese
3. Mahjong tiles, Wikipedia
4. 麻雀牌, Wikipedia (Chinese) Chinese