The Kizuna Project (Translation)

Here is the translation to the Kizuna Project post (Japanese) provided by Kenji Baba of Riichi Mahjong Central.

As for me, I shall look to make comments on this later, as I look it over.  In the meantime, feel free to look at this over yourself and develop your own opinions.

Section 1:

We’d like to share something that we were able to prove while running LAPOM, and that is “Nothing is impossible if we all come together”.

It was generally thought that inviting Japanese pro mahjong players to events overseas and contacting them was a difficult thing to do.  I believe that LAPOM was able to prove that it isn’t difficult at all as we made this possible with in person events as well as online events.

We also hear many voices in the community where people want more contents, and there is an on going project that we are working on, that will most likely surprise many of you.

While the history of mahjong in Japan dates back to about 100 years, mahjong has been embedded in the Japanese pop culture in different forms. This includes Professional/competitive mahjong organizations, dedicated media outlets, comics/manga and anime, strategy books, mahjong parlors, mahjong related products, mahjong schools and mahjong games.

Mahjong evolved in its own way in Japan, and the people in Japan who don’t want mahjong to be a global game is considered to be extreme minorities.  But the truth of the matter is that there were close to zero ways to bridge the gap.

Although there were limited amount of people we can contact regarding this issue, the increased usage of social media allows us who can to easily communicate with people all around the word and deepen the understanding of the issue over the course of time.

But what is still an issue is that it requires some amount of currency in the form of money to make things into reality. When it come to hosting any mahjong related event, there is a lot of time and money required.  I don’t believe it is only limited to mahjong events, but most of these events do not generate any profit.  We will put aside any opinions where the issue lies within the execution, but what we wanted to share with everyone is that making these ideas into reality requires a lot of effort.

Using LAPOM for example, Junko went to Japan multiple times to negotiate the details, and thanks to her, the projects became a reality, but all the travel expenses were out of her personal pocket. This is not only for her. The same can be said for Kenji at RMC.

So why is it that we continue to do what we do with the money and time put into everything?

This is because of our members at LAPOM. It is because of them and the fact that we want them to enjoy mahjong events, and the experience at our club. This is why we put in our time and money into mahjong. And this isn’t only with LAPOM.

There is some history that other organizations will be surprised if they realize the amount of work and money put into making events possible. Supporting the community is not only limited to money and funding. There are other ways to support. This is the one of the base rule foundation of the KIZUNA PROJECT.

For those who will participate in the KIZUNA PROJECT, let’s bring 200% of positive support to those who want to do something for the community! There are several ways to support.

As mentioned earlier, paying isn’t the only way to show support.

Let’s like and write feedback to those who create videos, blogs and host tournaments, as well as subscribing and sharing them.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the algorithms before. For those who are in the tech industry, let’s tag and like these contents. This will blossom at some point. And for the streamers and creators, just streaming is not the solution.

Let’s keep in mind that in order to continue creating good content with the community’s support, increasing the view count is important.

We also want to have people understand when providing feedback, is that these feedback should be productive, and pure negative feedback is meaningless.

Let’s try to also provide a solution when providing opinions and negative feedback.

Section 2:

Next is something that is almost inevitable for any community, and that is to “Be aware of the traps that some people who have been in the community longer will place”.

It’s only natural that if you’re playing the game for a long time, that you will find out exactly what you like and do not like. What we need to keep in mind, is that new players who come into our community are scared of these people and that leads to growth prevention.

This is something we experienced at LAPOM, but there were several players in the past where they were saying mean things to new players. After these players left, an increase of continuing new players who enjoy the game has lead up to our club growing to about 300 players. Although we lost some strong players through this transition, it turned out positive.

We want to inform players, especially for those who have been in the community for a couple years, as this may be something to be aware of.

Mahjong is a game where anyone can enjoy. The most important thing is that once we come together through something we all like, we are all friends. Even though your intentions weren’t bad, there may be cases where you might be scaring new players. (For example, even if you’re saying something right, be careful on HOW you say it.) If you’ve been in the community long enough, I’m sure you like to analyze things in numbers.

I’ve been thinking about this lately. If we have the overall mahjong player population in a pyramid, there is no difference between players from Japan and overseas. It is said that there are about 3 million mahjong players in Japan.  But majority of them do not buy or read strategy books.

And the amount of people who watch mahjong related contents are not that high either.

But it has been increasing gradually with the start of M League.

But how many mahjong players are there outside of Japan? This is still unknown at the moment, so please let me know if you do! Are the numbers we have right now enough? We don’t know the answer to that, but we do know that there are not enough people who support the people who provide for the community. If there were enough supporters, many of the ideas we all have would have been made into reality by now.

Everyone always says that more content is needed, right? Money is definitely required to make this possible.

For those who are on the business side of things, contents and products can not be made if they can’t figure out a game plan with how many players are there outside of Japan.

This is the same thing for competitive leagues and tournaments. If there are enough players who support the cause, bigger things would have happened by now.

I am a competitive player like most of you out there.  I want to see more competitive competition style events and participate! But I think we are still too early in this stage.

I want to propose something to those who have been in the community a long time. Let’s think together on how we can increase the amount of mahjong players as a community. How can we have new players think that mahjong is a fun game? How fun is to study and watch videos?

I want the community to have strong players and to have these players also have supporters following them. I also want the community to look up to these players.

On a side note, the amount of players in the mahjong community is significantly lower than those of the Poker and League of Legends community. Do you think the 3 million player count is possible with our community as well?

I’m not part of the poker or League of Legends community, but I believe mashing is the best game out there. But for those who are in both communities, what do you think?

I would not be surprised if the Riichi mahjong community will get to that point eventually. For those who have been in the mahjong community for a while, let’s have kind words for the new players and all think together on how we can have them enjoy mahjong!

Section 3:

“Action is key!” I’m very happy to see so many players from different countries, culture and languages come together as one! 

I’ve seen a lot of comments where people say that there are not many mahjong players in my nearby community and that the information provided in their own language is close to none, but is this really true?

We know that the amount of mahjong players have the most amount of Riichi players, but let’s focus on a different area. Recently, we’ve seen a huge increase in players from China, Taiwan and Russia. 

There are many Riichi mahjong players in China where they use their local social media outlets to form groups and some of the bigger groups have a player count over 2000 players. 

SKYDRAGON, who organizes one of the groups on Discord in Taiwan, also has about 2000 players enrolled.  It also seems like there are around 200 players in the mahjong club at the University of Taiwan, and about 60 players show up for each meetup.  

Gameboy, who has his own YouTube channel, has an amazing amount of views that might even be more than some channels based in Japan.

We also saw a lot of participants from Russia in the KIZUNA Cup, and they have been increasing rapidly the past several years. 

These three countries are not English based. Does this mean that the information provided in each language has a direct link to the amount of Riichi players? We don’t know exactly, but it is definitely a factor. I believe the most important thing to note here is the amount of effort and marketing that has been put into everything in these countries.

Does the amount of information localized to each region connect to the amount of growth? There are a lot of explanation and how-to videos in English, but are these showing the same amount of results?

What is key here, is that we should learn from these things since we have an easy environment where we can show and present to others. 

Just to clarify, I have no knowledge of marketing. I do know that eSports is growing rapidly, but I am not familiar with the streams or up to date with any of the news. I believe there are many of you out there who are more knowledgeable in this field. What I want to say, is that if we all promote mahjong and increase our marketing skills, the player count should increase and we should be able to come up with a better method.

We have showcased with the KIZUNA Cup that thanks to all the local translators, we were able to deliver these information to many people. 

What we need to do now is act. We are all trying to figure it out too, but I think the most important thing to do is act as we think of a better way to deliver. It might be a cycle where we “figure out->try to figure out-> act->trial and error->repeat”, but we need to continue to aim higher and not just leave the current method as is and be satisfied. We need to continue and improve at what we do best.

So as the second rule becomes more important, we would like to have an environment where it is easy to suggest new ideas. 

And as mentioned in the first rule, we need to support this movement to the best of our abilities. 

So the third rule is to fully support those who are taking action! It doesn’t matter if your region is Spanish, Portuguese, French or any other language including the English regions.

Let’s create more action! We hope this movement will ignite the community in some way or form. And to the younger generations! I think there are ideas that only you guys can come up with, and we would like to create an environment so you can.

Don’t be shy and let’s all act! This isn’t only limited to localizing. Those who excel in marketing, designing, video creating, writing and those who are knowledgable the music and gaming scene are all important talents when it comes to spreading mahjong.

So have your voice heard! Let’s all act! The third rule is to act regardless of big or small the idea may be!

Section 4:

The KIZUNA PROJECT will have paid mahjong strategy sessions and book translations and similar projects, so “let’s make this into a culture and a custom!”

A concern, is the spread of illegal contents spreading online. There may be no need for this to be said for those who have common sense, but we are now in an age where we can read and learn from those who put time into writing and translating contents.

This isn’t limited to mahjong, but there are a lot of pirated anime, manga/comics and music from Japan. Being able to enjoy this for free is great, but think of how you are able to support those who put in time and effort. Publishers and authors of mahjong strategy books know that there are pirated versions. So we thought there should be some kind of penalty for these actions.

The reason for this is because the time and effort put in to all the work won’t be valued as much if it is pirated for free, and that will not lead to the next step.

But after talking with several organizers within the community, we have concluded to trust the Riichi community with this issue.

So there won’t be any penalties, but please understand that once we hear there are some leaks, we will have to cancel the project as a whole.

I thought the most important thing is to make this supporting movement into a culture and a custom, and to create a community that won’t pirate contents and ignore copyrights. (That being said, no one said you CAN pirate, so really, be careful.)

There also things we should all be accustomed to.  

Rather than creating minor rules, let’s all help create a better Riichi community culture!

Note: Since all of these are relatively new things, we will be working on alot of free contents to test out the demand for the contents.

So the 4th rule is to keep common sense and morality to the heart, and abide by them. And don’t put pressure on those who do break these ideas. Let’s all think on what we can do to make this a culture and a custom!