By Rafe Calder
A hanafuda deck has forty-eight cards. Twelve months, four cards each, one flower for every month. There are no numbers and no suits in the Western sense. That was the point.
What is in the box
Encyclopaedia Britannica says the name means “flower cards” and that each of the twelve suits is tied to a calendar month and shows a flower associated with it. Wikipedia, the open encyclopaedia, lists them. January is pine, February plum blossom, March cherry blossom, April wisteria, May water iris, June peony, July bush clover, August susuki grass, September chrysanthemum, October maple, November willow, December paulownia.
The cards are small and stiff. Both Wikipedia and Britannica give the size as 5.4 by 3.2 centimetres. Britannica says they are about three times thicker than Western cards, and Wikipedia says the back is usually plain, traditionally red or black.
Scoring comes from what is pictured. Wikipedia names four kinds: bright (hikari, 20 points), animal (tane, 10), paper strip (tanzaku, 5) and chaff (kasu, 1). Britannica describes the same pattern in plainer words: a plain flower is worth one point, a card with a poetry slip five, and the top card, with an animal, bird, object or the Moon, ten or twenty. Britannica adds that most games have three players, and that a full game runs twelve hands, one for each month. Games it names include koi koi.
Where cards came from
Playing cards arrived with Europeans. Wikipedia says the Portuguese introduced them in the mid-16th century, in a deck of 48 cards in four suits of twelve ranks. 99% Invisible, a design podcast and website, is more exact: it dates the arrival to 1549, when Portuguese ships reached Japan and a missionary brought a deck. Britannica says only that hanafuda developed after the Portuguese introduced Western cards in the 17th century. Japan Society of Boston, a cultural organisation, says Dutch and Portuguese merchants introduced cards in the 1500s. We show the dates side by side and do not choose.
The bans
Wikipedia’s timeline is the fullest. In 1633 Japan closed off contact with the Western world and foreign playing cards were banned. In 1648 the Tokugawa shogunate banned the Japanese-made Tensho karuta. Cards were banned again in 1791. The earliest known reference to hana awase, an earlier form of hanafuda, is from 1816, when it was recorded as a banned gambling tool. Early hana awase decks, Wikipedia says, had 12, 20 or even 32 suits, and later settled on 12. In the Meiji period, it adds, cards became tolerated.
99% Invisible tells it as a design story: decks that looked European were forbidden, so makers produced variants that looked more Japanese, using nature scenes instead of numbers. Wikipedia says early hanafuda carried old poems on some cards, disguising them as uta-garuta, a poetry game, as a loophole. Our reading: the flower pictures were doing a job, and the poems were a second layer of cover.
A Kyoto card shop
Nintendo’s own company history page, a producer’s account of itself, says that in 1889 Fusajiro Yamauchi began making and selling Japanese playing cards, hanafuda, in Shimogyo ward, Kyoto. Wikipedia gives the same year. 99% Invisible gives 1899 for the company’s founding; we treat that as a conflict, not a correction. The Nintendo page also says it started making and selling the first Western playing cards in Japan in 1902.
How the early cards were made also differs by page. 99% Invisible says Yamauchi’s first custom flower cards were hand-painted on mulberry bark and sold mainly from small shops in Kyoto. Japan Society of Boston says the work was done by hand at first and that Nintendo kept hand-making cards until the early 1970s, after the practice had begun to die out elsewhere by the mid-1940s. Mario Museum, a fan-run site, says Kyoto had a long tradition of craftsmanship in paper, printing and decorative arts, and that other card makers worked nearby in the 19th century. The Marufuku Nintendo Card Company was not the only one.
Wikipedia names two long-running makers of modern Japanese hanafuda: Oishi Tengudo, founded in 1800, and Nintendo, founded in 1889. Nintendo’s history page also lists a Nintendo Museum in Uji, Kyoto. We have not read the museum’s own pages.
Dates in order
- 1549: playing cards arrive with Portuguese ships, according to 99% Invisible.
- Mid-16th century: the same event, according to Wikipedia.
- 1633: foreign cards banned, according to Wikipedia.
- 1648: Tensho karuta banned, according to Wikipedia.
- 1791: cards banned, according to Wikipedia.
- 1800: Oishi Tengudo founded, according to Wikipedia.
- 1816: hana awase recorded as a banned gambling tool, according to Wikipedia.
- 1889: Yamauchi starts making hanafuda in Kyoto, according to Nintendo and Wikipedia.
- 1902: first Western playing cards sold by the company, according to Nintendo.
Side by side
Date of the first cards: 1549 (99% Invisible), mid-16th century (Wikipedia), 1500s (Japan Society of Boston), 17th century (Britannica). Founding year: 1889 (Nintendo, Wikipedia, Japan Society of Boston, Mario Museum) against 1899 (99% Invisible). Founder’s birth: 1859 (Japan Society of Boston) against 1868 (Mario Museum). Korea’s hwatu, Wikipedia notes, swaps the November and December suits relative to Japan.
What kind of sources these are
Britannica, an encyclopaedia; Wikipedia; 99% Invisible, a design podcast; Nintendo’s corporate history page, a producer’s own account; Japan Society of Boston; and Mario Museum, a fan site. We read no Japanese museum or tourism-board page.
Questions a buyer would ask
Why are the cards so small and thick? Wikipedia and Britannica give the size and the thickness, but neither explains the reason.
Is December always paulownia? According to Wikipedia, December is paulownia in Japan. The same article says Korea’s hwatu swap the November and December suits.
What we left out
Prices, rules of play beyond the basics, the gambling-parlour reputation, the founder’s company’s later products, and any named living maker.
Quick answers
How many cards are in a hanafuda deck?
Britannica and Wikipedia both say 48 cards in 12 suits of four, one suit for each month.
Why were hanafuda cards made?
According to 99% Invisible, imported-style decks were forbidden and makers produced Japanese variants with nature scenes. Wikipedia dates bans from 1633 onward.
When did Nintendo start making hanafuda?
Nintendo’s company history page says Fusajiro Yamauchi began making and selling hanafuda in Kyoto in 1889.
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Roam first. Shop later.