History...Though refined card games were played in Japan by the nobility since its early years, they were not commonly used for gambling, nor played by the lower classes. This changed, however, in the 18th year of Tenmon (A.D. 1549) when Francisco Xavier landed in Japan. The crew of his ship had carried a set of Hombre (48-card Portuguese) playing cards from Europe, and card games, or more specifically, gambling card games, became extremely popular with the Japanese. When Japan subsequently closed off all contact with the Western world in 1633, foreign playing cards were banned. Despite the ban, gambling with cards remained highly popular. Private gambling during the Tokugawa Shogunate was illegal. Because playing card games per se were not banned, new cards were created with different designs to avoid the restriction. For example, an anonymous game player designed a card game known as "Unsun Karuta". These cards were decorated with Chinese art, each depicting Chinese warriors, weaponry, armor, and dragons. This deck consisted of 75 cards, and was not as popular as the Western card games had been simply because of the difficulty of becoming familiar with the system. When gambling with a particular card deck design became too popular, the government banned those cards to restrict gambling activity, which then prompted the creation of new cards. This cat and mouse game between the government and rebellious gamblers resulted in the creation of many differing designs. Through the rest of the Edo era through the Meiwa, Anei, and Tenmei eras (roughly 1765-1788), a game called Mekuri Karuta took the place of Unsun Karuta. Consisting of a 48-card deck divided into 4 sets of 12, it became wildly popular and was one of the most common forms of gambling during this time period. In fact, it became so commonly used for gambling that it was banned in 1791, during the Kansei Era. Over the next few decades, several new card games were developed and subsequently banned due to the fact that they were used almost exclusively for gambling purposes. However, the government began to realize that some form of card games would always be played by the populace, and began to relax their laws against gambling. The eventual result of all this was a game called Hanafuda, which combined traditional Japanese games with Western-style playing cards. Because hanafuda cards do not have numbers (the main purpose is to associate images) and the long length to complete a game, it has a partially limited use for gambling. However, it is still possible to gamble by assigning points for completed image combinations. By this point, however, card games were not nearly as popular as they had been due to past governmental repression. In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai for the purposes of producing and selling hand-crafted Hanafuda cards painted on mulberry tree bark. Though it took a while to catch on, soon the Yakuza began using Hanafuda cards in their gambling parlors, and card games became popular in Japan again. Today, Hanafuda is commonly played in Hawaii and South Korea, though under different names. In Hawaii, it is called Sakura, Higobana and sometimes Hanafura. In South Korea, the cards are called Hwatu and the most common game is "Go Stop". It is also played in the former Japanese colony of Micronesia, where it is known as Hanafuda. It is a four-person game, and is often paired cross-table, though the Korean and Japanese versions are usually played with three players, with two-person variants. Despite its focus on video games, Nintendo still produces the cards, although this business is diminishing. In 2006, Nintendo published Clubhouse Games (42 All-Time Classics in the United Kingdom) for the Nintendo DS, which included Koi-Koi. The following rules are by no means official; there are many different games played with Hanafuda, and there are as many different variations as there are players. | ||||||
