5.00 USD

Karuta is the most popular among the many kinds of card games in Japan. It is played mostly on New Year's Day, but there are also national conventions for playing karuta. Each card has a poem, or portion thereof, written on it with a total of 100 poems in the game.

On this card, Shizuko Nogi was wife of the renowned General Maresuke Nogi. She and her husband lost two sons during the Russo-Japanese War, a conflict during which her husband earned both military honors for waging a successful siege on Port Arthur, and notoriety for losing nearly 60,000 men in the process. As an act of devotion to the Meiji Emporer, she and her husband committed ritual suicide after the emperor's funeral entourage passed their home. By doing so, they hoped to accompany the emperor into the spiritual realm. She and her husband can be spiritually contacted at the "Nogi Jinja" shrines located in Aoyama and Chofu.

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5887950


****** PLEASE NOTE THIS IS NOT THE ENTIRE CARD SET but rather some of the cards as it was an incomplete game so we broke them up into smaller sets.

2 cards in this set.

In this set, the game of karuta involves two types of cards.

1 "reading" card with drawings: yomifuda
1 "grabbing" card with words: torifuda

There are whole phrases of waka from the collection called Hyakunin Isshu written on the yomifuda. Only the lower phrase of the waka is written on the torifuda. When the reader reads out the waka on the yomifuda, the player quickly searches for the card among the torifuda to look for the phrase that matches the one that the reader is reading. This is the basic rule.

These are from the "昭和" "showa period" . The "showa" period is from 1926-1989 but these are from 1937.

These would be great for using in your art...mixed media, collage etc.
Each card measures 7 x 4.8 cm.

You get the cards you see in the pictures.

To see more karuta cards, please click here - http://etsy.me/2csBLJ7

To see more vintage prints, please click here http://etsy.me/2eRcmY7

To see more of our Japanese vintage items, please click here http://etsy.me/2c53Q8m