Hanafuda

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.

In 1648, Tenshō Karuta 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. Mechanically, Mekuri is similar to Chinese fishing games. 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.

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. 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.

In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo for the purposes of producing and selling hand-crafted hanafuda. 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 hanafuda 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.

Hanafuda were likely introduced to Korea during the late 1890s and to Hawaii in the early 1900s. 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. 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 Hachi-Hachi, all of the November cards count as kasu, and in the game Sakura, the values of the cards are different.

Text significance

A few cards in hanafuda contain Japanese text. 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.

Edo-period hanafuda frequently had poems on them in order to disguise themselves as uta-garuta (poem playing cards) with illustrations. This tradition continued on some cards produced after the ban on playing cards was lifted, but it is now rare. Cards that have lines of poetry on them are usually the less ornate kasu cards.

Cards made early after the end of the ban often had the name of the corresponding month on the tanzaku cards, and sometimes numbers on all the cards. This made it easier for new players to play games that require knowing what suit is associated with what number, such as Yomi-derived games and kabufuda games.

Korean

In Korean hwatu decks, the writing on the tanzaku cards is replaced with Korean text naming the type of card it is. Similar text is usually present on the blue tanzaku cards as well. In addition to the examples below, the manufacturer's name and marks are often prominently present on the various joker cards, and the manufacturer's logo is typically featured on the full moon card.

Games

Mekuri-derived games:

• Hana-Awase
  • Minhwatu
  • Koi-Koi
    • Sakura
    • Go-Stop
  • Roppyakken
  • Mushi
• Hachi
• Hachi-Hachi
  • Sudaoshi
• Tensho

Yomi-derived games:

• Poka (game)
• Hiyoko
• Isuri

Gabo Japgi/Kabufuda-derived games:

• Seotda
• Dorijitgo-ttaeng

Unicode

In Unicode, a symbol to represent hanafuda is available at U+1F3B4 🎴 FLOWER PLAYING CARDS in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block. This character is typically rendered as the Full Moon with Red Sky card. It was added as part of Unicode 6.0 in 2010 for compatibility with a KDDI emoji character, and was added to Unicode Emoji 1.0 in 2015.