Hyakunin Isshu Special Selection / no.1215 set of Karuta

The artifact of the month for March is the Hyakunin Isshu Special Selection / no.1215 set of Karuta handcrafted by Satoshi Tamura from the Tamura Shogundo studio in Kyoto, Japan. 

Satoshi Tamura and the Karuta Studio, Tamura Shogundo 

The art of hand crafting Karuta cards was taught to Satoshi Tamura by his father who was taught by his father, Satoshi Tamura’s grandfather. Satoshi Tamura works at Tamura Shogundo, a Karuta studio in Kyoto, Japan founded by his grandfather in 1921. The same artwork his grandfather used for his sets in 1921 is still being used by Satoshi Tamura today. 

How the Karuta Cards are Made 

In a YouTube video documenting how the cards are made (The process of making traditional Japanese playing cards. A high-end cards workshop in Japan.), Satoshi Tamura guides us through the five steps of making the cards. First, he cuts the edges of rectangular pieces of washi paper at a 45 degree angle on each corner. Next he glues a piece of cardboard to a piece of paper with the card pattern printed on it, allowing it to dry for three days. He does so meticulously: applying the glue evenly, removing dust by hand, and placing the paper on the board from one corner to the one adjacent to ensure there are no air bubbles. The third step is cutting the cardboard-reinforced paper into the 100 cards. He begins by cutting the paper first into ten rows, then cutting each of the ten cards from the ten rows individually. In the fourth step he reinforces the edge of the cards with the washi paper that was cut in the first process by gluing the card to the center of the paper before folding over the washi paper edges. The last part of his process is a quality inspection to ensure there are no scratches or misalignments and the cards are continuous when slid out. He places the cards in a paulownia box and the set of Karuta cards are complete. 

About the Cards 

Karuta are Japanese playing cards, introduced to Japan at the end of the 16th century, and are classified into two groups: those descended from the Portuguese playing cards and those from eawase or e-awase. While non-matching games can technically be played from the Hyakunin Isshu set, they are more typically used for an eawase card game known as Uta-garuta or Hyakunin Isshu, a poetry matching game played on Japanese New Year holidays. 

The set consists of two corresponding sets of 100 cards: the Yomifuda set and the Torifuda set. The Yomifuda set are reading cards containing an illustration of a poet, the poet's name, and a complete poem. The Torifuda set are corresponding “grabbing cards” which have the last few words of one of the Yomifuda poems on them.  

The poems are usually from Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (translated as “one hundred people, one poem [each]”), a Japanese waka (poetry anthology that was compiled in the 13th century by Fujiwara no Teika). Traditional illustrations include woodblock portraits made in the 17th century by Hishikawa Moronobu, with full color edition prints made in the 18th century by Katsukawa Shunshō. 

How the Game is Played 

While there is a two-team play style, the game is most frequently played with one person being a reader and others as individual players. The reader will read a Yomifuda card and the players will search for the corresponding Torifuda card as quickly as possible with the person who grabs it first keeping it. The process is repeated for each of the 100 Yomifuda cards. The person with the most cards at the end is the winner.