Plum Blossoms, A Series of Hanafuda Cards

Hanafuda (花札 - ”flower cards”) cards are Japanese playings card thought to be inspired from Portuguese cards during the 16th century. 1 Instead of using numbers, they uses the depiction of flowers, animals, and tanzaku 2 as a point system. A full deck contains 48 cards divided into 12 suits representing the 12 months. 

Prints were created using a lithograph to stamp the pattern onto paper. Other Meiji-era techniques include woodblock printing, which then dye is added using stencils and a brush. 3 On the right, the combination of plum blossoms and a warbling white-eye, a small bird known from its distinct white coloring around its eye, represents the month of February or the arrival of spring, 4 while the red slip reads aka-yoroshi. 5

1. Tikkanen, Amy. “Hanafuda.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/ hanafuda. 

2. A strip of paper pertaining poetry or wishes for good fortune. 

3.“Hanafuda Variations.” Fuda Wiki. https://fudawiki.org/en/ hanafuda/patterns. 

4. Earliest reference to the pair can be traced to a 7th–8th century collection of Japanese poems entitled Manyoshu. The phrase “like plum blossoms and warbler” is also an expression meaning a good relationship. Kanazawa, Ai. “Hanafuda: Japanese Culture Dealt in a Deck of Cards - Entoten.” Entoten, 12 Mar. 2014, https://www.entoten. com/2014/03/12/hanafuda-japanese-culture-in-a-deck-of-cards/. 

5. Aka-yoroshi roughly means “Red - not bad”. “Hanafuda Variations.” Fuda Wiki. https://fudawiki.org/en/hanafuda/ patterns.