Hanafuda (Japanese: 花札, lit. 'flower cards'[1][2]) are a type of Japaneseplaying cards. They are typically smaller than Western playing cards, only 5.4 by 3.2 centimetres (2.1 by 1.3 in), but thicker and stiffer.[3] On the face of each card is a depiction of plants, tanzaku (短冊), animals, birds, or man-made objects.[4][5] 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. Hanafuda are used to play a variety of games including Koi-Koi and Hachi-Hachi.
Outside Japan
In Korea, hanafuda are known as hwatu (Korean: 화투, Hanja: 花鬪, 'flower battle') and made of plastic with a textured back side.[6] The most popular game is Go-stop (Korean: 고스톱), commonly played during special holidays such as Lunar New Year and Chuseok (Korean: 추석).[7][8]
In Hawaii, hanafuda is used to play Sakura.[9]Hanafuda is also played in Micronesia, where it is known as hanahuda and is used to play a four-person game, which is often played in partnerships.[10]
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.[11] After Japan closed off all contact with the Western world in 1633, foreign playing cards were banned.[12]
In 1648, Tenshō Karuta were banned by the Tokugawa shogunate.[13] 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.[14]
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.[14] Mechanically, Mekuri is similar to Chinese fishing games.[15] 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 hana awase (a previous version of hanafuda) 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.[16]
As hana awase modernized into hanafuda, it standardized at 12 months (suits) with four rank-like categories. The majority of hanafuda games are descended from Mekuri although Yomi adaptations for the flower cards survived until the 20th century.[14] Though they can still be used for gambling, its structure and design is less convenient than other decks such as Kabufuda. In the Meiji period, playing cards became tolerated by the authorities.
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.[22]
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[23][24] and to Hawaii in the early 1900s.[9] Since then, companies and individuals in Korea and Hawaii have produced their own hanafuda, sometimes adapting the original Japanese imagery to fit either culture. Also made for western audiences are decks which fuse hanafuda with Toranpu (トランプ, "Trumps" a.k.a. the standard 52-card deck). These decks have indices on all their cards, and introduce a 13th suit which varies considerably by manufacturer (jokers, flowers, objects from japanese imagery, left blank or used as a "snow" suit, left as western Kings, etc.).
Cards
There are 48 cards total, divided into twelve suits, representing months of the year. Each suit is designated by a flower and has four cards.[25] An extra blank card may be included to serve as a replacement. In Korean hwatu decks, several joker cards (조커패) award various bonuses.[26]
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 Hachi-Hachi, all of the November cards count as kasu, and in the game Sakura, the values of the cards are different.
* In the Korean hwatu version, the November and December suits are swapped.
Text significance
A few cards in hanafuda contain Japanese text. Early hanafuda had poems in order to disguise themselves as Uta-garuta, but the text had since been simplified in modern times. In addition to the examples below, the December kasu cards typically display the manufacturer's name and marks, similar to the Ace of spades in western playing cards.
Cards
Description
akayoroshi (あかよろし, "red is good") with the hentaigana character 𛀙 for ka
In Unicode, a symbol to represent hanafuda is available at U+1F3B4🎴FLOWER PLAYING CARDS in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block.[28] This character is typically rendered as the Full Moon with Red Sky card.[29] It was added as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 and added to Unicode Emoji 1.0 in 2015.[29]
^In the mid-Edo period, only the warbling white-eye card had red plum blossoms, while the rest had whitish flowers. Although its eyes are red, hanafuda from the mid-Edo period had a fairly dull color (darker than the leaves of Iris or Paulowinia) and were closer to the color of an actual warbling white-eye.[27]
^Hanafuda from the mid-Edo period had no background, only the wisteria and the cuckoo. The color of the flowers were quite pale. Later in the Meiji period, the flowers became darker and red clouds began to appear. Around the 1880s, the current "red crescent moon" began to appear.[27]
^In the mid-Edo period, the score cards had a white peony design, while the Kasu had a red peony design or two red and white cards.[27]
^In the mid-Edo period, the color of the flowers were quite pale, but in later periods, the color became darker.[27]
^The "bright red night sky" is said to have changed from plain or light blue in the early period, to yellow or light pink in the late Edo period, to bright red in the Meiji period. Also, during the era of woodblock printing, the moon was hidden at the bottom or left edge (sometimes a crescent moon). White was the color of the unprinted parts, so it was difficult to paint around it and leave it alone while using woodblocks.[27]
^Throughout the Edo period to today, the three geese are depicted flying in the shape of the letter く, but around the 1880s, they were flying in a parallel line like 三 and filled the entire sky. For this reason, geese were considered large birds and formed a yaku with the Crane and Phoenix in some games.[27]
^In the mid-Edo period, one of the kasu had a red chrysanthemum while the rest were white chrysanthemums. From the late Edo period onwards, cards with yellow-red flowers began to appear.[27]
^Originally, the figure with umbrella was a yōkai (amefurikozō), whom people from the Edo period recognized as the highwayman Sadakurō from the play Kanadehon Chūshingura.[27] In 1886, the publisher Maeda Kihei (前田喜兵衛) negotiated with manufacturers in Kyoto and Osaka to change the design from Sadakurō to the calligrapher Ono no Michikaze to improve the image.
^Today, the swallows are brightly colored yellow and red, but in the mid-Edo period, they were normal swallow colors (black with a red throat).[27]
^This card's design is significantly different from the other rain cards, but from the Edo to early Meiji periods, it was like other kasu with only a willow tree drawn on it. In the early 1880s, it began being painted solid red, and in the late 1880s, the picture was changed from a sunny willow tree to the lightning drum in the rain.[27]
