Poetry, physicality, card game? Japanese competitive karuta
August 11, 2018 8:52 AM Subscribe
Nintendo is well-known for starting out (in 1889) as a playing card company, but did you know that they first printed cards for a fiercely competitive, lightning-fast game that is little known outside Japan?
Karuta is one of the rare card games where there are fouls, and you can injure yourself. Wikipedia has the brief description but it's worth watching on YouTube. While there are many variants, the most striking one to me is Uta-Garuta (歌ガルタ), which is based on a series of 100 waka (和歌) poems (a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable form that predates haiku). The first part of each poem is read to the entire room by an expert reader, and each pair of players tries to grab the card containing the rest of the poem. Each poem is written by a different author, from a renowned 13th-century anthology known as Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (小倉百人一首).
If you want your own set, Irish poet, translator, and karuta player Peter MacMillan created a beautifully illustrated English-language version as well as a conventional translation in book form.
Karuta is one of the rare card games where there are fouls, and you can injure yourself. Wikipedia has the brief description but it's worth watching on YouTube. While there are many variants, the most striking one to me is Uta-Garuta (歌ガルタ), which is based on a series of 100 waka (和歌) poems (a 5-7-5-7-7 syllable form that predates haiku). The first part of each poem is read to the entire room by an expert reader, and each pair of players tries to grab the card containing the rest of the poem. Each poem is written by a different author, from a renowned 13th-century anthology known as Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (小倉百人一首).
If you want your own set, Irish poet, translator, and karuta player Peter MacMillan created a beautifully illustrated English-language version as well as a conventional translation in book form.
I love karuta. Sadly, my tsugaru-ben and my fairy tale sets disappeared during my last move. I saw a Shakespeare set once with all the quotes written in katakana and I wish I'd bought it.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:16 AM on August 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 9:16 AM on August 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
Link to ROMs plz?
posted by Hicksu at 9:33 AM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Hicksu at 9:33 AM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Sing or Swim, I learned about this game from Chihayafuru. I read the manga first though.
posted by Pendragon at 9:44 AM on August 11, 2018
posted by Pendragon at 9:44 AM on August 11, 2018
The "watching" links stops at 6:30 for me... the video continues but the sound just repeats... "unk unk unk unk"...
posted by Pendragon at 9:48 AM on August 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Pendragon at 9:48 AM on August 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
>I learned about this game from Chihayafuru. I read the manga first though.
Yeah, I'd never heard of the game before seeing the anime, and I could scarcely believe it was real. A card game, played by grade-school kids, which requires you to memorize a hundred poems? Most of the kids in my grade school had difficulty remembering the rules to 'kill the man with the ball'.
So is the romance ever resolved in the manga?
posted by Sing Or Swim at 10:00 AM on August 11, 2018
Yeah, I'd never heard of the game before seeing the anime, and I could scarcely believe it was real. A card game, played by grade-school kids, which requires you to memorize a hundred poems? Most of the kids in my grade school had difficulty remembering the rules to 'kill the man with the ball'.
So is the romance ever resolved in the manga?
posted by Sing Or Swim at 10:00 AM on August 11, 2018
So is the romance ever resolved in the manga?
I don't know... the manga is still being published and I stopped reading at about the same place the anime ends....
posted by Pendragon at 10:55 AM on August 11, 2018
I don't know... the manga is still being published and I stopped reading at about the same place the anime ends....
posted by Pendragon at 10:55 AM on August 11, 2018
> Anybody who likes their weird card games with a certain amount of frustrating, never-to-be-resolved romance is directed to the darn-good anime Chihayafuru.
That's the open secret about the series - the romance was resolved in the first ~10 chapters. The series is actually about one girl's love for karuta and how these two basic bitches do their best to rob her attention away from the sport.
Also, *spoilers*
while the romance is slow burn, I don't think there's really any ambiguity in the direction it's been headed. Chihaya's already rejected Taichi, after all. I think the series also pretty clearly portrayed the romantic interest between the two as one sided, whereas there's always been romantic tension between Chihaya and Arata, even started from when they were kids.
posted by Qberting at 10:56 AM on August 11, 2018 [4 favorites]
That's the open secret about the series - the romance was resolved in the first ~10 chapters. The series is actually about one girl's love for karuta and how these two basic bitches do their best to rob her attention away from the sport.
Also, *spoilers*
while the romance is slow burn, I don't think there's really any ambiguity in the direction it's been headed. Chihaya's already rejected Taichi, after all. I think the series also pretty clearly portrayed the romantic interest between the two as one sided, whereas there's always been romantic tension between Chihaya and Arata, even started from when they were kids.
posted by Qberting at 10:56 AM on August 11, 2018 [4 favorites]
I used to work at a Japanese gift shop, and we had a deck of these behind the counter. Made by Nintendo, I think! I never learned to play, but my Japanese coworkers were very excited by the idea.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:06 PM on August 11, 2018
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:06 PM on August 11, 2018
Huh, I always thought Nintendo got their start with hanafuda! Neat
They did a fun segment for one season of Game Center CX where they did “Famicom Karuta.” They spread out a bunch of Famicom games on the floor between the participants, and the judge would read a slogan used at the time for one of those games, and they played by standard karuta rules (touch your choice). It was kind of a cool idea!
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:25 PM on August 11, 2018
They did a fun segment for one season of Game Center CX where they did “Famicom Karuta.” They spread out a bunch of Famicom games on the floor between the participants, and the judge would read a slogan used at the time for one of those games, and they played by standard karuta rules (touch your choice). It was kind of a cool idea!
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:25 PM on August 11, 2018
I always liked Unsun Karuta, too. No poems here; instead you get a variant on a Western deck plus an additional suit and some fairly different face cards.
posted by wanderingmind at 5:45 PM on August 11, 2018
posted by wanderingmind at 5:45 PM on August 11, 2018
If you want another brilliant movie to watch that involves weird card games, Summer Wars (2009) is super good and a deeply underrated movie, and a major plot point is dependent on hanafuda.
posted by yueliang at 10:07 PM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by yueliang at 10:07 PM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
This is less Nintendo and more weird card games, but if you like the idea, you might want to check out James Ernest's "real-time card game" Falling.
posted by JHarris at 10:33 PM on August 11, 2018
posted by JHarris at 10:33 PM on August 11, 2018
Oh man, Falling! That is a weird and wonderful card game. Hard to explain before playing, but it’s at least an extremely novel concept, even if it isn’t actually that much fun in practice.
Hanafuda (or, more specifically, koikoi) is really fun though! The press-your-luck rules are great
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:39 AM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
Hanafuda (or, more specifically, koikoi) is really fun though! The press-your-luck rules are great
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:39 AM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
I thought they started with hanafuda, too!
I have an uta-garuta set gifted by my Japanese neighbor when I was making my own translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, but while at her prompting I've brought it out a couple times at gatherings, we've never actually played it. I fully expect, after reading Chihayafuru, to be disappointed at just how undramatic a beginner's match is.
posted by Quasirandom at 11:06 AM on August 13, 2018
I have an uta-garuta set gifted by my Japanese neighbor when I was making my own translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, but while at her prompting I've brought it out a couple times at gatherings, we've never actually played it. I fully expect, after reading Chihayafuru, to be disappointed at just how undramatic a beginner's match is.
posted by Quasirandom at 11:06 AM on August 13, 2018
Uta-Garuta is an amazing game to explain to people. "First, memorise a hundred, eight hundred year old poems."
I've got a Chihayafuru themed set, and even playing with a vastly reduced selection it's surprisingly tense and challenging. I think it's incredible that people manage to keep track of the card positions in a full game.
posted by lucidium at 8:31 AM on August 14, 2018
I've got a Chihayafuru themed set, and even playing with a vastly reduced selection it's surprisingly tense and challenging. I think it's incredible that people manage to keep track of the card positions in a full game.
posted by lucidium at 8:31 AM on August 14, 2018
Oops, that video had a nice opening and I couldn't find the documentary that I was looking for, but obviously it has problems with the audio. Here's a nice NHK episode of Japanology that has audio throughout, though it has a syncing issue.
posted by wnissen at 7:19 AM on August 15, 2018
posted by wnissen at 7:19 AM on August 15, 2018
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posted by Sing Or Swim at 9:01 AM on August 11, 2018 [3 favorites]