Differences between Sango vs Naniwa vs Mari

If you own an unbranded Mahjong set with vast similarities compared to the sets manufacturered by Taiyo Chemical Industries, you may find this helpful. There are several ways you can determine this.

The best way to categorize the brand of your set is by measurement of the tile dimensions. The measurements for the Sango, Naniwa, and Mari tile sets are as follows:


 * Sango: 25.5mm (H) x 18.5mm (L) x 15.5mm (W)
 * Naniwa: 25.5mm (H) x 18.5mm (L) x 16.5mm (W)
 * Mari: 26mm (H) x 19.5mm (L) x 16.5mm (W)

You should easily be able to tell which set your tile comes from just by these measurements.

The second method in determining the make of your tile is to look for brand-specific design features. Usually, there are several notable differences between tiles of different branding. Luckily, for the Sango, Naniwa, and Mari tiles, there are some distinct features that gives away this.

For instance, the design of the 1s tile contains slightly different variations in each of these sets. Below are the relevant images to illustrate this point.

Here are the distinct features of these 3 tiles.


 * Sango: Notice the beak of the bird. The top beak should be inked in red, while the bottom is black, attached to the head of the bird.
 * Naniwa: Here we see both beaks are now in red. The lines are completely disconnected with the rest of the bird as opposed to the Sango example.
 * Mari: Finally, the pose of the bird is completely different. This should be self-explanatory...

So there you have it. You should now be able to distinguish the differences between these sets.