hanafuda

hanafuda is a japanese card deck. various games can be played with them.

the cards feature images of flowers, animals, and a few other symbols; but overall, they don’t have any markings such as a suit, number, or color, unlike western decks of cards. rather, cards are organized by the fact that they share the same type of imagery, such as pine trees, or wisterias.

each month is represented by four cards of various types & point values:

• kasu - “junk” plain cards (1 point)
• tanazaku - ribbon cards (5 points)
• tane - animal cards (10 points)
• hikari - “bright” cards (20 points)

the tanazaku cards are split up into three groups:

• red tanazaku
• blue tanazaku
• poetry tanazaku

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