The 48 hanafuda cards, month by month

How to read the deck

Nothing printed on a hanafuda card says what it is: there are no numbers or suit symbols in the corners. Two things tell you everything. The plant gives the card’s month, and whatever else is drawn with it gives its kind.

The deck at a glance

One row per month. Each name jumps to its card below.

January: Pine

1月 · old name 睦月 mutsuki · flower 松 matsu

The tree of the New Year. Pine kadomatsu stand at the gate to welcome the year’s god, and pine, crane and rising sun together make an auspicious picture of long life.

• Crane: A red-crowned crane stands among the pines under a huge red sun. Pine and crane are paired emblems of long life, a motif taken from Chinese painting, and the sun recalls the first sunrise of the year.
• Red poem tanzaku: The strip reads akayoroshi (あかよろし). Its second letter is an old cursive form of か that looks like の, so it is often misread as “ano yoroshi”. The phrase is usually explained as “truly excellent”, though some card historians read it simply as naming the red ribbon.^[8]

February: Plum

2月 · old name 如月 kisaragi · flower 梅 ume

The first blossom of the year, opening in the late-winter cold and loved in poetry long before the cherry.

• Nightingale: The bird is an uguisu, the Japanese bush warbler, which this game calls the Nightingale. It is the “bird that announces spring”, and “plum and warbler” is a byword for a perfect pair. Its bright green is closer to a white-eye (mejiro) than to the olive-brown real warbler.^[7]
• Red poem tanzaku: The second akayoroshi strip. With the pine and cherry strips it makes Akatan.

March: Cherry

3月 · old name 弥生 yayoi · flower 桜 sakura

Blossom-viewing season, hanami: picnics and parties under the cherry trees, often screened off with a striped curtain.

• Curtain: Cherry trees in full bloom above a maku, the curtain that screened off a blossom-viewing party. It is a light, and with the Sake cup it makes Hanami de ippai, “a drink under the blossoms”.
• Red poem tanzaku: This strip reads miyoshino (みよしの), “fair Yoshino”: the hills of Yoshino in Nara, the cherry-blossom place of classical poetry.

April: Wisteria

4月 · old name 卯月 uzuki · flower 藤 fuji

Late spring turning into early summer, when wisteria hangs in long purple sprays and the hototogisu returns to sing.

• Cuckoo: A lesser cuckoo flies across a red crescent moon. Its first song was awaited as the sign of summer, and the dawn moon is said to echo a classical poem in which only the moon remains where the cuckoo sang.
• Red tanzaku: A plain red strip with no writing: it counts for Tan, not for Akatan.
• Wisteria plains: The dark flower clusters give the suit its nickname kuromame, “black beans”.^[5]

May: Iris

5月 · old name 皐月 satsuki · flower 菖蒲 ayame

Irises bloom by the water in early summer. Strictly, the flower on these cards is the rabbit-ear iris, kakitsubata (杜若), though the suit is usually called ayame (菖蒲), as it is in this game.

• Bridge: A zig-zag plank bridge over a stream: the “Eight Bridges” of The Tales of Ise, where Ariwara no Narihira wrote a poem whose five lines begin with the syllables ka-ki-tsu-ba-ta.^[15] No animal is drawn on it, yet it is a tane card worth 10 points.

June: Peony

6月 · old name 水無月 minazuki · flower 牡丹 botan

The peony, “king of flowers”, blooms in early summer. Peony and butterflies are a picture of wealth and splendour borrowed from Chinese painting.

• Butterflies: Two butterflies over red peonies; creatures that transform, they stood for renewal and long life. One of the three Inoshikachō cards.
• Blue tanzaku: The first of the three blue tanzaku that make Aotan. In this deck the blue strips carry no writing.

July: Lespedeza (bush clover)

7月 · old name 文月 fumizuki · flower 萩 hagi

In the old calendar the seventh month was already autumn, and hagi, bush clover, one of the seven flowers of autumn, marks its start. This game calls it by its botanical name, lespedeza.

• Boar: A wild boar charges through the bush clover. Boars were said to flatten hagi for their beds, the “boar’s bed” of classical poetry, and Yoshida Kenkō noted that even a fearsome boar sounds gentle when you speak of its bed.^[16] The second Inoshikachō card.
• Bush clover plains: The red-flowered suit is nicknamed akamame, “red beans”.

August: Pampas grass (susuki)

8月 · old name 葉月 hazuki · flower 芒 susuki

Mid-autumn: silver plumes of susuki and the harvest moon of tsukimi, when pampas grass is set out as an offering to the moon, and wild geese arrive from the north. August and December are the only months with no tanzaku.

• Moon: A white full moon rises over a black hill of grass against a red sky. On old hand-printed cards the fine grass ran together into a solid black mound, which gave the card its nickname bōzu, “monk”, for a shaved head.^[9] With the Sake cup it makes Tsukimi de ippai.
• Geese: Three wild geese fly over the hill; migrating geese are a classic sight of autumn.

September: Chrysanthemum

9月 · old name 長月 nagatsuki · flower 菊 kiku

The Chrysanthemum Festival, Chōyō, fell on the ninth day of the ninth month, when petals were floated in sake to wish for long life.^[10] The chrysanthemum is also the flower of the imperial crest.

• Sake cup: A red lacquered cup marked 寿, “long life”, among the chrysanthemums: the sake of the festival. It is a tane card, and the shared card of the two viewing yaku, with the Curtain and with the Moon. How this game counts it is explained below.

October: Maple

10月 · old name 神無月 kannazuki · flower 紅葉 momiji

Autumn leaves and leaf-viewing outings, momiji-gari. In classical poetry the cry of a stag among the fallen maple leaves is the loneliest sound of the autumn.

• Deer: A sika deer among red and gold leaves, turning its head away. That averted head is said to be the origin of the slang shikato, “to give someone the cold shoulder”, from shika (deer) and tō (ten, the card’s points).^[11] The third Inoshikachō card.
• Blue tanzaku: The third blue tanzaku, which completes Aotan.

November: Willow

11月 · old name 霜月 shimotsuki · flower 柳 yanagi

The odd month out. Willow, swallow and frog are spring images in Japanese poetry, and the suit is often simply called ame, “rain”. November is also the only month with one card of each kind.

• Rain: The only person in the deck: the Heian calligrapher Ono no Michikaze (894–966, read Tōfū on this card) walks with an umbrella beside a stream where a frog leaps for a willow branch. Legend says that watching the frog try again and again persuaded the discouraged Michikaze to keep practising.^[14] Around 1886 he is said to have replaced an older figure, a rain goblin people took for a robber from a kabuki play.^[12]
• Swallow: A swallow darts through the willow fronds, a favourite subject of painters.
• Lightning: A red and black storm with the thunder god’s drum, said to come from Ōtsu-e folk painting. It looks special, but it is a plain.^[3]

December: Paulownia

12月 · old name 師走 shiwasu · flower 桐 kiri

Paulownia really flowers in early summer. Its place at the end of the year is often explained by wordplay, kiri sounding like the word for an end, but that is a folk explanation.^[13] Paulownia and phoenix are emblems of the imperial court, and a paulownia crest is still the emblem of the Japanese government.

• Phoenix: In Chinese lore the phoenix alights only on the paulownia and appears in the reign of a virtuous ruler.
• Paulownia plains: December is the only month with three plains. The first one here has a yellow band along the bottom; in Koi-Koi it is an ordinary plain. On printed decks one paulownia plain usually carries the maker’s name as well; this set has none.

Cards that trip people up

A few cards break the patterns above. They are worth a second look before your first game.

All the cards by kind

The same 48 cards sorted by kind, the way Koi-Koi counts them. Each group links to the yaku it makes.

About these pictures

Card pictures: “SVG Hanafuda with traditional colors (black border)” by Louie Mantia and すけじょ, with revisions by Spenĉjo (three faces), from Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. The files are minified, with size attributes and a licence notice added; the drawings are unchanged. See the full per-file credits.