The Japanese culture fascinates me and was a great inspiration for my senior project. My passion led me to take a minor in Professional Japanese in addition to my concentration in Graphic Design and Printmaking. During my first semester studying Japanese we would play a card game called Karuta to help us practice the Japanese hiragana (one of the writing systems used in Japan). I wanted to recreate the obake karuta deck from the Edo period (1603-1868) in Japan, which featured a different obake, or monster, for each hiragana.

 

The game originates from a poetry matching game called Uta Garuta. In Uta Garuta, you race other players to find the card that matches a poem that is read aloud. It is a highly competitive game that is still played today. The deck I’ve created is a version of Iroha Karuta which uses two sets of 48 cards, one card in each set represents a sound in the hiragana alphabet. 

 

My goal was to take a Japanese game with Japanese subject matter and make it playable and accessible to an English speaking audience. Japan has many obake and yokai from the inane Tofu Boy and Fluffy Hair to the downright scary Teke-teke and Slit Mouth Woman. This deck only represents a small amount of the monsters and urban legends that exist in Japanese culture. It features some well known classics as well as some more obscure ones. I’d recommend doing some of your own research to find your favorite.