Historical Figure

                The person that I consider a “pioneer” in Hanafuda is Fusajiro Yamauchi. He was a japanese entrepreneur who founded the company called Nintendo. Back in 1633 in Kyoto,  Japan, their government had banned all foreign playing cards and games. They did this to get rid of illegal gambling. This went on for many years and the popularity of playing cards were slowly declining.

The popularity of cards finally went up when Yamauchi brought up the idea of a new card game. They then eventually allowed the game, Hanafuda, which uses illustrations instead of the numbers that is used in western cards.  They are smaller than regular playing cards and had images painted on them. Such as, cherry blossoms, deer, birds, and other nature types of illustrations He developed unique hand crafted illustrations for the card game hoping to boost up sales. It was interesting how the hanafuda cards were made because  in a book, Nintendo the company and its founders, by Mary Firestone she said “In the early days, making the cards began with pound-ing the bark from a mulberry tree into a paste” and this past mixed with clay were made to make backings(16).

 He then opened his first Hanafuda card shop, Nintendo Koppai, in 1889.  In the company name he used chinese kanji wich means, “leave luck to heaven”. The hand painted cards he sold were a success and grew popular all over japan. Soon with high in demand his company became one of the top gameing company. His business boomed even higher when the Yakuza (japanese mafia) began to use his hanafuda cards in gambling casinos. Gamblers use a brand-new decks when they start a each new game so they went through a lot of cards.

                With the increase of demand grew even more with time he needed to hire and train new employees to produce more cards. He then expanded his company again to produce american-style playing cards. stated “Nintendo became the first company in Japan to produce Western-style playing cards”(17). I though this was cool to actually think that this company would try to go into dealings with the west. Yanauchi also made a deal with a national tobacco company, which then in turn made it possible for him to sell his cards in tobacco shops all over japan.

Book Comparison

It was really hard to find another book on hanafuda but I found one at last. Its called Hanafuda flower cards by Kelsey Lynn Cretcher. There is a lot more colorful decorations and illustrations in this book. This book has a little history as well but what I noticed that was different was how she talked about how western cards were brought to japan which resulted in the banning gambeling in general. There were many alterations to these cards over time so they can keep the cards from being banned. While in the other book, Hanafuda the flower card game, they just brushed over that part of history.  The illustrations in this book are hand made while the cards in the previous book were more like the actually cards were scanned. The hand drawn cards were beautiful but, they are not the same as the ones that you would commonly buy at a store. For teaching purposes I think they should have used the version that you can buy.

                The general rules that were mentioned in this book was length, dealing, playing field, capturing cards, hands, and scoring. The playing rules in the other book were number of players, choosing the dealer and establishing the playing order, shuffling and cutting the cards, dealing, players and dropouts, taking cards, drawing cards, dealt three of a kind, end of the game and score keeping, and bonus combinations. just by looking at the the sub categories of the two books the first one is more detailed about everything while the second book wants to give the basic idea of game. Both are good ideas but in this case I believe the second book is better for a new player wanting to learn the general basics. If someone with the basic understanding wanted to learn more details about it then they would use the first book.

                The games which are covered in the second book is that are covered in the first book are Mushi and Koi-Koi. The difference is that in the second book they put a non native version of koi koi called go stop. I talked about this in a previous blog post but I will explain its origins. It’s a korean card game that was made from koi koi hanafuda. They still use hanafuda cards but they are called hwatu cards. In the book it states the origin so you can know the difference. I think its good to add a few countries version’s but I think it would have been good if it was in a seprate book for koi koi hanafuda.

                The quote that I like from this is in the history portion of the book when the writer wrote “though not very popular in the beginning the wide spread use of [Hanafuda] by yakuza in gambling games made the cards extremely poplular” because it is ironic that even though a dark group used the cards for selfish means, nevertheless over time the cards became a bright fun enjoyable game.