Hanafuda - WikiHQ

alt=A typical setup of hanafuda for the game of Koi-Koi, on top a red zabuton with a peony pattern.|thumb|A typical setup with for playing [[Koi-Koi|296x296px]]

() are a type of Japanese playing cards. They are typically smaller than Western playing cards, only , but thicker and stiffer. On the face of each card is a depiction of plants, , animals, birds, or man-made objects. One single card depicts a human. The back side is usually plain, without a pattern or design of any kind, and traditionally colored either red or black. are used to play a variety of games including and .

Outside Japan

In Korea, are known as (, Hanja: ) and made of plastic with a textured back side. The most popular game is Go-stop (), commonly played during special holidays such as Lunar New Year and ().

In Hawaii, is used to play Sakura. is also played in Micronesia, where it is known as and is used to play a four-person game, which is often played in partnerships.

History

Playing cards were introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century. The Portuguese deck consisted of 48 cards, with four suits divided into 12 ranks. The first Japanese-made decks made during the Tenshō period (1573–1592) mimicked Portuguese decks and are referred to as Tenshō Karuta. The main game was a trick-taking game intermediate in evolution between Triunfo and Ombre. After Japan closed off all contact with the Western world in 1633, foreign playing cards were banned.

thumb|296x296px|Hana awase cards from c. 1700, by painter Tosa Mitsunari (1646–1710). A predecessor of hanafuda. This card set contained 100 suits of 4 cards each. Cards depicted here include direct equivalents of modern hanafuda, such as pine with crane and rising sun, maple with deer, and willow with umbrella yōkai.

In 1648, were banned by the Tokugawa shogunate. During prohibition, gambling with cards remained highly popular which led to disguised card designs. Each time gambling with a card deck of a particular design became too popular, the government banned it, which then prompted the creation of a new design. This cat-and-mouse game between the government and rebellious gamblers resulted in the creation of increasingly abstract and minimalist regional patterns (地方札). These designs were initially called Yomi Karuta after the popular Poch-like game of Yomi which was known by the 1680s.

Through the Meiwa, An'ei, and Tenmei eras (roughly 1764–1789), a game called Mekuri took the place of Yomi. It became so popular that Yomi Karuta was renamed Mekuri Karuta. Cards became so commonly used for gambling that they were banned in 1791, during the Kansei era. On the other hand, Uta-garuta such as Hyakunin Isshu were officially permitted as being educationally beneficial. So as a loophole to the ban, early hanafuda were made to have old poems on some of the cards, disguising them as Uta-garuta. Remnants of this can be seen via the tanzaku-ranked cards.

The earliest known reference to (a previous version of ) is from 1816 when it was recorded as a banned gambling tool. The earliest decks contained between 12, 20, and even 32 suits, each with one high value card, one tanzaku card, and two low-value cards.

As modernized into , it standardized at 12 months (suits) with four rank-like categories. The majority of games are descended from Mekuri although Yomi adaptations for the flower cards survived until the 20th century. Nintendo has focused on video games since the 1970s but continues to produce cards in Japan, including themed sets based on Mario, Pokémon, and Kirby. The Koi-Koi game played with is included in Nintendo's own Clubhouse Games (2006) for the Nintendo DS, and Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (2020) for the Nintendo Switch.

Though modern Japanese hanafuda is primarily made today by either of the long-standing Oishi Tengudo (1800) or Nintendo (1889), dozens of others have manufactured hanafuda, such as Angel, Tamura Shogundo, Matsui Tengudo, Ace, Maruē, and many more.

thumb|upright|Playing card (fused Jack of Spades and November Hikari) from the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University

Hanafuda were likely introduced to Korea during the late 1890s and to Hawaii in the early 1900s. An extra blank card may be included to serve as a replacement. In Korean hwatu decks, several joker cards (조커패) award various bonuses.

The standard categorizations and point values for each card are as follows. Note that some games change the point values or categorizations of the cards. For example, in the game , all of the November cards count as kasu, and in the game Sakura, the values of the cards are different.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Composition of a deck

! Month/suit Flower

! colspan="2" | (20 points)

! colspan="2" | (10 points)

! colspan="2" | (5 points)

! colspan="3" | or (1 point)

! January Pine

|Red-crowned crane and Sun

| colspan="2" |

| |

|Poetry tanzaku

| colspan=2|

|2 cards

! February Plum blossom

| colspan="2" |

| |

|Bush warbler

| |

|Poetry tanzaku

| colspan=2|

|2 cards

!March Cherry blossom

|Curtain

| colspan="2" |

|Poetry tanzaku

| colspan=2|

|2 cards

!April Wisteria

| colspan="2" |

|Lesser cuckoo