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.