| title | description | published | date | tags | editor | dateCreated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Karuta |
A general term for Japanese playing cards. |
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2021-08-16 18:46:42 UTC |
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2021-04-28 05:17:52 UTC |
Karuta [骨牌 - かるた] is a general term for Japanese-style playing cards (as opposed to toranpu, Western-style playing cards). These fall into a wide array of categories and subcategories, some of which are detailed below.
The term karuta is also often used specifically in reference to the competitive game of Hyakunin-Isshu. {.is-warning}
| Type | Characteristics |
|---|---|
| Hanafuda | Generally 48 cards, with some exceptions. 12 suits of 4 cards each, of varying types depending on the suit. They feature somewhat abstracted depictions of culturally relevant flora and fauna pairings, with each suit represented by a species of plant. Used to play a wide variety of games. |
| Kabufuda | 40 cards. Four copies each of numbers 1 through 10, mostly represented by abstract black stripes, ultimately derived from the Portuguese suit of batons. The Aces are abstracted from dragons and the 10s are "court" cards, though the subject depicted has changed over time from a monk to a Jack. Primarily used to play certain gambling games of the kabu and kingo genres. |
| Mekuri Karuta | Generally 48 cards. 4 suits of 12 cards each, with each card in hierarichical order from 1 to 12. The 10, 11, and 12s are generally court cards, though often extremely obscured by abstraction. They feature the same suits as their Portuguese predecessors - swords [isu], batons [hau], coins [ouru], and cups [kotsu]. Mekuri karuta come in a wide variety of regional variants, and can be used to play a similar variety of games to their toranpu and hanafuda relatives. |
| Unsun Karuta | 75 cards. 5 suits of 15 suits each. Primarily associated with the 8-player trick-taking game Hachi-Nin Meri. |
| Ogura Hyakunin Isshu | 200 cards - Two decks of 100 cards each. One deck's yomifuda [reading cards] each contain a waka poem and a depiction of the poet; the other deck's torifuda [grabbing cards] only contain the second half of the poem depicted on one card from the first deck. This belongs to a wider family of Uta-Garuta, poetry cards. The yomifuda are also sometimes used to play other games not involving poetry. |
| Iroha-Karuta | 96 cards - Two decks of 48 cards each. Essentially a simpler variant of Uta-Garuta. Each card in the first deck features a (usually hiragana) character, and each card in the second deck contains a proverb or quote beginning with a character from the first deck. |