HANAFUDA
(Flower Cards)

Hanafuda is a traditional Japanese card game which consists of 48 cards.

There are many variations of games played with Hanafuda cards but basically

the objective of the game is to accumulate more points than your opponents by

collecting certain combinations of designs on the cards from the stock of the cards in the centre of the table.

Amongst the most popular variations of the games are 'KOI-KOI', 'HACHI-HACHI' and 'FLOWER-MATCHING',

some of which you might have come across with online games or Nintendo DS.

Now, here are the REAL cards you can touch!!

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Card size : 5.6cm x 3.4cm (smaller than conventional European playing cards)

Contents : 48 cards depicting various flowers and nature plus 2 blank cards as spare cards

Material : 0.8 mm thick cardboard

Instruction sheet : Written in Japanese but there are many websites which feature variations and rules of the game

Players : 2 - 6 (2 players for KOI-KOI, 3 players for FLOWER-MATCHING, 3-7 players for HACHI-HACHI etc.)

Age : 8 years and over

Playing time : approx 10 - 180 mins

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Some examples of the suits

 MORE HANAFUDA FACTS

Hanafuda cards do not have numbers. Its main purpose is to associate images on the cards.

The set consists of 12 suits, each representing the months of the year, for example Cherry Blossom for March, Maple for October etc.

Typically, each suit consists of four cards, two of which are normal, one 'robbin' and one 'special'. each having different point value. 

Skills required include strategic thought and probability analysis.

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Hanafuda originates from European playing cards brought by Portugee missonarys in the 1500's.

From the 1600's to late 1800's, The Japanese govourment kept banning the card games due to it's gambling nature but each time new card games were developed.

Eventually, Hanafuda, which combined traditional Japanese games with Western-style playing cards was developed.