Playing cards were introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the mid-16th century. The
Portuguese deck consisted of 48 cards, with four suits divided into 12 ranks. The first Japanese-made decks made during the
Tenshō period (1573–1592) mimicked Portuguese decks and are referred to as
Tenshō Karuta. The main game was a
trick-taking game intermediate in evolution between
Triunfo and
Ombre. After Japan closed off all contact with the Western world in 1633, foreign playing cards were banned. In 1648, were banned by the
Tokugawa shogunate. During prohibition, gambling with cards remained highly popular which led to disguised card designs. Each time gambling with a card deck of a particular design became too popular, the government banned it, which then prompted the creation of a new design. This cat-and-mouse game between the government and rebellious gamblers resulted in the creation of increasingly abstract and minimalist regional patterns (地方札). These designs were initially called
Yomi Karuta after the popular
Poch-like game of
Yomi which was known by the 1680s. Through the
Meiwa,
An'ei, and
Tenmei eras (roughly 1764–1789), a game called
Mekuri took the place of
Yomi. It became so popular that
Yomi Karuta was renamed
Mekuri Karuta. Cards became so commonly used for gambling that they were banned in 1791, during the
Kansei era. On the other hand,
Uta-garuta such as
Hyakunin Isshu were officially permitted as being educationally beneficial. So as a loophole to the ban, early hanafuda were made to have old poems on some of the cards, disguising them as Uta-garuta. Remnants of this can be seen via the tanzaku-ranked cards. The earliest known reference to (a previous version of ) is from 1816 when it was recorded as a banned gambling tool. The earliest decks contained between 12, 20, and even 32 suits, each with one high value card, one tanzaku card, and two low-value cards. As modernized into , it standardized at 12 months (suits) with four rank-like categories. The majority of games are descended from
Mekuri although
Yomi adaptations for the flower cards survived until the 20th century. Nintendo has focused on
video games since the 1970s but continues to produce cards in Japan, including themed sets based on
Mario,
Pokémon, and
Kirby. The
Koi-Koi game played with is included in Nintendo's own
Clubhouse Games (2006) for the
Nintendo DS, and
Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (2020) for the
Nintendo Switch. Though modern Japanese hanafuda is primarily made today by either of the long-standing
Oishi Tengudo (1800) or Nintendo (1889), dozens of others have manufactured hanafuda, such as Angel,
Tamura Shogundo,
Matsui Tengudo, Ace, Maruē, and many more. Hanafuda were likely introduced to Korea during the late 1890s and to Hawaii in the early 1900s. Since then, companies and individuals in Korea and Hawaii have produced their own hanafuda, sometimes adapting the original Japanese imagery to fit either culture. Also made for western audiences are decks which fuse hanafuda with Toranpu (トランプ, "Trumps" a.k.a. the
standard 52-card deck). These decks have indices on all their cards, and introduce a 13th suit which varies considerably by manufacturer (jokers, flowers, objects from Japanese imagery, left blank or used as a "snow" suit, left as
western Kings, etc.). ==Cards==