Today’s Japan Photo: Hanafuda 花札
On Saturday evening, I went out to catch the awesome anime move Summer Wars, and I’m so inspired by the movie that for Today’s Japan Photo we shall take a look at this interesting card game Hanafuda 花札.
Folks who have seen Summer Wars would be familiar with these Hanada cards. The photo was taken by flickr user 5-pieces. Here’s a description taken off Wikipedia:
Hanafuda (花札) are playing cards of Japanese origin (karuta cards), used to play a number of games. The name literally translates as ‘flower cards’. Hanafuda 花札 was developed in Japan after the introduction of Western playing cards over 350 years ago.
A Hanafuda deck consists of 48 cards divided into 12 suits of 4 cards each. Each suit is named after one of the twelve months of the year and each has its appropriate flower in major and minor cards. There are many variants styles of playing with Hanafuda.
In Summer Wars, the protagonists were playing Koi-Koi (こいこい), whereby the object of the game is to form special card combinations called ‘yaku’ from cards accumulated in your point pile. You can gain cards in your point pile by matching cards in your hand, or drawn from the draw pile, with cards on the table. Once you have made a yaku, you can stop to cash in your points, or keep going (referred to as ‘koi-koi,’ hence the name of the game) to form additional yaku for more points. The point values assigned to individual cards have no effect on the score, but they are helpful to judge their value in forming yaku.
