Sensu has funded. ✿.*･｡ﾟ(ﾉ^^)乂(^^ )ﾉ｡ﾟ･*✿

Thanks for all the feedback and support. (^_^)

Jason & Antonietta

We have received some great feedback about the poker indices that will improve the look and functionality of the fusion deck even more!

We have decided to implement this change by updating the poker indices on the Fusion deck so that the numbers on the heart and diamond suits are red instead of black (as is typical for a standard poker deck).

We have updated the artwork in the Kickstarter to reflect this change.

It is a subtle change, but an important one. (^_^)

So, I just realized that I had uploaded an older version of the tuck image in the original post here. I went ahead and updated the image to the newest version. The only difference being that we had decided to move the Sensu kanji to the back of the tuck and put the fan emblem on the front instead.

@Don
That's good to know for future projects. We will definitely keep you in mind.

Thank you for your feedback.

The sides and the backs were created to be uniform. The sides of the faces are all uniform in one facing. The backs are actually completely uniform, even when rotated.



Interesting, we had not realized that the aged look was becoming a thing or even an overused thing. Antonietta made them for what appealed to her artistically as opposed to the market. Although we understand the importance of both. In fact, we originally were planning on a tabletop release next, but she went on long and beautiful creative tangent that led to the birth of these decks. LOL.

When she first began designing them, she was playing with watercolor and was considering a softer watercolor look as well. But, for the joy of mark making, she enjoyed the looser look and it naturally progressed to what it is.

She drew inspiration from pottery glazes, woodblocks (particularly some from Utagawa Hiroshige and other artists of that 19th century time period), and the hand illustrated drawings of Uchiyama Rossetsu.

The aged look was not created as an applied layer or effect. It is part of the art. But, a softer deck does sound like an appealing idea for a future project.

She would also love to create a deck from batiks or linos. Her roots are actually as a batik (fiber, wax and dyes) artist. But, alas, that is a project for the far future due to the lack of studio space atm.

As always, thanks for the great feedback. We will definitely keep it in mind for future projects.

Jason & Antonietta

We have decided to relaunch Hanami. The new project is now live.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iws/hanami-hanafuda-and-poker-playing-cards-and-rulebo

We have made a lot of great changes.

The Goal

• The project goal has been reduced to $11,500.

The Decks

• Decks now include free US shipping and reduced ROW shipping.
• We have lowered the price of the decks. For example, for a US backer, One Deck, including shipping, is now $16 (previously $22).
• Decks will no longer have foil, gilding, or seals.
• Decks will still be printed by LPCC on their casino-quality Emerald Finish card stock.

The Rulebook

• We have switched book printers.
• The Color Rulebook now has free worldwide shipping.
• The Color Rulebook is now EU & AU friendly.
• The Color Rulebook will now be printed on 70# paper.
• The Digital Rulebook price has been reduced to $16 (previously $20).
• We have added a Print + Digital Rulebook Bundle option.
• Color Rulebook and Rulebook Bundle options have been added to the pledge tiers.

Thanks,
Jason & Antonietta

Just wanted to let everyone know that we have launched!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iws/hanami-hanafuda-and-poker-playing-cards-and-hanafu

Yes, the learning curve for picking up traditional hanafuda cards can be tough. One of the reasons we created the rulebook and Fusion deck was to make hanafuda more accessible.

Since we designed them, we’ve been using the Fusion cards ourselves. They are convenient even when you know how to play. They also make a great teaching tool.
On the other hand, playing with the Hanafuda deck in public can be a fun conversation starter. 

Thanks for your vote. We are currently leaning towards #1 ourselves.

Hello everyone.
Our newest project, Hanami Hanafuda & Fusion (Poker) Playing Cards, will be launching soon on Kickstarter.

Hanami (“flower viewing”) was inspired by the floral motifs and symbolism-rich imagery of traditional Japanese hanafuda. Every card in the Hanami deck is unique. Hanami was designed as 13 tetraptychs, creating a unique floral scene for each month.

Hanami will be printed by Legends Playing Card Company (LPCC) on Emerald Finish card stock and will feature gold gilded edges, a numbered seal, and a foil-stamped tuck.



What is Hanafuda?
Hanafuda (known in Korea as 'Hwatu') are floral-themed playing cards that are rich in symbolism and popular in Japan, Korea, and Hawaii. Hanafuda cards have 12 suits. Each suit is represented by a month (e.g. June) of the year and each month is represented by a flower (e.g. Peony).


What is the Fusion deck?
Since traditional hanafuda cards lack pips and indices, we designed our own hanafuda indices to indicate the flower, month, and type of each card. We combined these indices with traditional hanafuda imagery and standard poker indices to create a multipurpose deck that could be used to play both Eastern and Western games.


Hanafuda Rulebook
Given the popularity, long history, and wide geographical range of hanafuda cards, there have been many games invented over the years. Unfortunately, rules for hanafuda games can be difficult to find and interpret, so we decided to create a rulebook that would gather these rules into a single clearly written source. Our 250 page rulebook contains 31-games with numerous illustrations, intuitive scoring examples, and quick reference charts and will be available as part of our Kickstarter project.



Hanami was inspired by our love for hanafuda. We hope to bring that joy to others with our Kickstarter project.

Kickstarter Link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iws/434670968?token=75f48f08

Thank you for taking the time to read our post and checking out our project!

Jason & Antonietta

*Edited to update the Fusion deck image to reflect the new design.

Just wanted to let everyone know that we have reworked our project and relaunched with a much lower goal.

Thanks again for all the great feedback. (And because I had to use him at least once. lol)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iws/i-nudi-a-tribute-to-lovers-hanafuda-and-poker-rela

>.< Thanks for catching that. I’ve updated the link with a corrected image.

We’ll see what we can do with the ribbons.

Thanks for your help in refining the design. We'll be going with the middle row's design.

We are working on updating the art and preparing the project for launch.

The previous images included the bleed area. There actually isn’t any space left on the template (image included in link below to show template overlay).

We’ve also included a few different text layouts based on your suggestion, along with the original for comparison. Let us know what you think. Thank you again for all your feedback.

[Warning: Mature material, discretion advised]
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jlltxdyjhvxeptr/Text.png?dl=0

@Don Boyer

Thanks for all the design suggestions. We’re currently tweaking the indices and some of the box & card art, and will share what we come up with.

Completely agree about the cultural and historical influences leading to the preservation of hanafuda. Their design and popularity definitely relied heavily on the “its just flowers and cultural images” line of argument.

Overall, its always interesting to see products/practices that show little or no change over time (and the various factors involved). For example, our refusal to adopt the metric system in the US.

Thanks for sharing more playing card history with me. I really enjoy learning new things and seeing how everything connects. Playing cards in Europe seem to have progressed very similarly to books (which makes sense logically, but playing cards aren’t generally mentioned in history courses).



@Worst Boyer
Yes, even the source I was paraphrasing from memory only had a few lines about it.
Uchiyama focuses entirely on the popular hanafuda game of the time, but its an interesting read.

Thanks for sharing the link. We’re familiar with that site.
Some of those obscure games really throw some wrenches into all the ‘normal’ hanafuda rules by rearranging the months, capture details, and yaku. It makes them interesting additions.

From our past research it also seems that ‘house rules’ were a very common practice for hanafuda games, so there are many rule variants for some games. We’ve even read a few jokes that every household made up their own rules to make sure visitors couldn’t win (this joke also shows up in some anime & asian dramas).
There are also games like ‘hana-awase’ whose name was generically assigned to several completely different games over the years. Of course there are some language barriers/translation issues as well.

Some of the older games also tend to use obtuse scoring methods involving various chips and tokens of odd denominations (Imperial system style currencies), which we plan to convert to a standardized points system to make the games more accessible. If space and time allows we may include both versions for the sake of preserving the originals.

These are the games currently included in the draft of our book:
-Matching Flowers
-Mushi
-Hana-awase*
-Min-hwatu
-Koi Koi
-Higo-bana
-Go Stop
-Hachi Hachi
-Sudaoshi
-Hachi
-Tensho
-Poka
-Hiyoko*
-Isuri
-Sutda
*multiple versions

We may add some Kabufuda games as well.

We’re always happy to see more references for hanafuda games. There are a lot of variations and house rules and having more sources aids in making sense of them all.

The goal of our book is to make hanafuda games more accessible and introduce the cards & games to new players.

I’ll reach out to EPCC again and see what we can figure out.
The mini deck size will continue to be an issue, but perhaps we can upgrade the poker deck.

Thanks for sharing the historical info about card indices. I didn’t realize the poker indices were such a recent addition. Western playing cards have been around for quite a long time (a few centuries at least iirc).

I hadn’t heard about the shared Chinese kanji for tile/card before. Hanafuda cards tended to be crafted from thicker materials like wood, tile, and (modernly) vinyl/plastic.

When Japan outlawed western cards & gambling, some of the first cards to gain popularity (before being banned as well) were Chinese. During the long ban (~200yrs iirc) the main focus was on gambling and cards with obvious pips/indices. Hanafuda cards were a natural evolution of card design in that environment. Small & easy to conceal, no obvious playing card markings, and gameplay that seemed unsuitable for gambling. It’s very interesting that they haven’t changed much since the ban was lifted over 100yrs ago.


We have reviewed our design and put together some mockups of the modifications we thought could work.

Note: There are 4 types of hanafuda cards Brights, Tens, Ribbons, and Chaffs.

Features that were part of the old design and kept:
1. The poker # indices indicate the base month (Ace = Jan, 2 = Feb, 3 = Mar, and so on.)
2. Figures on Bright cards are larger than figures on Ten cards.

New Features:
1. All months containing a Bright have colored backgrounds.
2. Flower Indices to indicate the flower suit.
—>The flowers on the card never change, while the assigned month varies. (Which is why we chose flower over month.)
3. Type Indices for the 4 card types (Bright = gold coin, Ten = silver coin, Ribbon = ribbon, Chaffs have no mark)

The decision for the card type indices was based on the general relative value of the card types. The 5 Brights tend to be the most value cards in most games, followed by the tens, then ribbons, and then chaffs.

We did not mark the sets because they are too variable. However, by marking the card types this should help players identify the cards they are looking for.

[Warning: Mature material, discretion advised]
Original Design Sheet: https://www.dropbox.com/s/afriri6k2pereo8/iNudi%20poker%20cut.png?dl=0
1. New indices placed under the poker indices: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tcmvh8bra7nx671/PIP-1.jpg?dl=0
2. New indices placed opposite the poker indices: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wv06c9bf8r3kxmj/PIP-3.jpg?dl=0
—>These also include an abbrv for the flower/suit.
3. Possible ways of adding the names: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ezzbmjrwiormyr6/PIP-2.jpg?dl=0
Note: these are quick rough drafts, so the art for the indices isn’t perfect/final.

We are leaning toward the first option of placing the new indices under the poker indices, so players can continue to fan their cards in the same direction they are used to.
Note: There are 3 types of Ribbon cards, so we are thinking about modifying the ribbon index to reflect the ribbon type (Poetry, Red, or Blue).

We are unsure about adding text around the core image, however it could help with the learning and recognition process. But if we did we are leaning towards placing the text on the corners, as seen on the Jack of Diamonds in link 3.

Let us know what you think.