Hello from Japan

[MarcusR]

Hi, I'm Marcus. I'm absolutely obsessed with Japanese playing cards and all aspects of them have become a ridiculously large part of my life these past years, to the chagrin of my wife. There's hardly any research done in this field even in Japan, and just from going through the archives of various museums, I've actually discovered some very important decks unknown to academia, like these 2 decks: https://japanplayingcardmuseum.com/awas ... terials/2/ https://japanplayingcardmuseum.com/namb ... 450-years/

I only own one single tarot deck and it's not my main field of interest, but I'm very interested in Japanese cartomancy, esp. done with hanafuda, aka flower cards. Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that there's no long history of this, despite the Japanese being really into divination, though there's a handful of contemporary readers doing it. I've done some extensive digging in old Japanese books and the only thing I've found are simple methods from the 19th century and onwards for telling your fortune with regular French-suited playing cards. In Korea, there are hanafuda solitaire games that also have some cartomancy elements to them but since I don't read Korean, it's hard to get a good understanding of them.

I am also launching my own hanafuda deck soon on Kickstarter which will be very well-suited to doing tarot-style readings, and I'm hoping to get some advice on it here, from experienced Tarot readers. Thanks for having me!

[Thelder]

Hi Marcus,

Welcome to the forum.

Also, thank you for the warning about the shipping situation in Japan (posted under the "Shipping cost are Cray" thread). I recently discovered a couple of online auction sites in Japan that have some items I'm interested in, but for now, I think I will wait until things get better before I try to order anything

[MarcusR]

Hi Marcus,

Welcome to the forum.

Also, thank you for the warning about the shipping situation in Japan (posted under the "Shipping cost are Cray" thread). I recently discovered a couple of online auction sites in Japan that have some items I'm interested in, but for now, I think I will wait until things get better before I try to order anything

Glad to be of service! Yes, it's dreadful, just as Japan and the world at large seemed about ready to move on from the pandemic, and experts were saying the worst of the shipping crisis would soon be behind us, there's a bloody war...