Akatan and Aotan: the red and blue tanzaku

The six tanzaku, and the four that do not count

A tanzaku is a strip of paper for writing a poem. The deck has ten, one in every month except August and December. Six of them make the two sets:

The other four are red too, but carry no writing: the Wisteria, Iris, Lespedeza (bush clover) and Willow tanzaku. They do not count for Akatan. They count for Tan (any five tanzaku), and each adds 1 to Akatan, Aotan or Chōfuku once you have a set.

Points here and under Nintendo’s rules

Akatan and Aotan are worth 5 points each here and in Nintendo’s published Koi-Koi table, with 1 more for each other tanzaku^[1]. As with Inoshikachō and Tane, the difference is Tan: Nintendo’s table says Tan does not count once Akatan or Aotan is made^[1], while this game counts it beside them. Add the doubling, from 7 points there and from 8 here, and the totals part from the fifth tanzaku on:

Chōfuku: both sets together

With all six, Chōfuku (重複, “overlap”; in full Akatan Aotan no Chōfuku) counts in place of Akatan and Aotan, never beside them, in this game and in Nintendo’s table^[1]. Without that rule the +1 would count twice: each set would take the other’s three cards as extra tanzaku and score 8. Chōfuku scores 10 once, plus 1 for each of the four plain red tanzaku you hold. It is also called bukku, from the English card word “book”, a set^[5].

Tanzaku and the koi-koi call

Akatan or Aotan alone is 5 points and does not double. Every tanzaku you capture afterwards raises your total, and each rise gives you a new choice to stop or call koi-koi. Two more tanzaku make five: Akatan 7 plus Tan 1 is 8, which doubles, and after one call the same cards pay 8 × 2 × 2 = 32. If the second set is still open, it would turn your yaku into Chōfuku. Every call also raises the multiplier for your opponent if they win the round instead.

What the red tanzaku say

The Pine and Plum tanzaku read あかよろし (akayoroshi). The second character looks like の, so many read “anoyoroshi”, but it is か in an old cursive form of 可, a hentaigana^[7][5]. What it means is disputed. The card maker Ōishi Tengudō glosses it as “truly splendid”, from akiraka ni yoroshi, “clearly good”^[7], and English Wikipedia follows that^[8]. Japanese Wikipedia calls this a mistake: akayoroshi just names the red tanzaku, since the blue ones were once called aoyoroshi^[5]. Tengudō also reports a theory that the words are a miscopy of shika zo sumu from a poem by Kisen Hōshi in the Hyakunin Isshu^[7].

The Cherry tanzaku reads みよしの (miyoshino), “fair Yoshino”: the Yoshino area of Nara, the classic cherry-blossom place of poetry, so the word itself means cherry^[5]. Tanzaku on mid-Edo cards hung from strings and carried no writing. Inscriptions such as みよしの appeared in the early Meiji era, makers wrote different words, and Nintendo’s あかよろし and みよしの became the usual ones^[5].

The blue tanzaku

The blue tanzaku of the Peony (June), the Chrysanthemum (September) and the Maple (October) carry no writing. On mid-Edo cards they were already dark blue, while the red ones were whitish^[5]. The Japanese names are sometimes written 赤丹 and 青丹 instead of 赤短 and 青短^[5], and in Korean hwatu decks the ribbons carry the words hongdan (紅短) and cheongdan (青短) in Hangul^[5].

Playing for Akatan and Aotan

• Six months, one card each. Akatan lives in January, February and March, Aotan in June, September and October. Any card of the same month takes the tanzaku from the table.
• One card blocks a set. Once your opponent holds one tanzaku of a set, that set, and Chōfuku, are out of reach for you. Hover over or tap a captured card to see progress such as “Aotan 2/3” or “out of reach”. With assisted highlighting on, a capture that completes a set says so (“Completes Akatan, +5 pts”), and one that blocks your opponent is marked.
• Choose between two cards of a month. When two cards of the month you play lie on the table, you take one of them (how matching works). In June and October the choice can be a blue tanzaku or an Inoshikachō card.
• Plain red tanzaku still help. Each adds 1 once you have a set, and any five tanzaku make Tan.

House rules and other games

• Akatan and Aotan are worth 6 in some rule sets, and Chōfuku (bukku) 12 or 15^[4][2].
• The +1 per extra tanzaku is a rule some players use, not all^[2]. Older descriptions give no bonus; instead Akatan and Aotan stack with each other and with Tan, and Chōfuku is not a yaku of its own^[3].
• In Hana-awase, Akatan (also called ura-sugawara) and Aotan score 40 each, and the plain red tanzaku of the Wisteria, the Iris and the Lespedeza make a yaku of their own, kusa (“grass”), worth 20^[6]. The same “grass ribbons” yaku appears in Go-Stop^[9].

This game keeps Nintendo’s values and the +1, and counts Tan beside the sets; no room setting changes that. The house rules page compares how rule sets stack yaku.

Questions