20 January 2010 Hanging out with the Kamadas and playing karuta
The other day the Kamadas came over for a little new year’s get-together, which involved hanging around at our house for a while and then going out for some great yaki-niku, where you grill your own meat at the table and drink lots of draft beer. The owner is a fan of Kamada-san’s pottery, which I’ve blogged about in the past, and he treated us like kings, especially because Kamada-san brought him a little present at my suggestion.
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The photo below shows them playing something very interesting. Japanese people are very big on various forms of karuta, or cards. The most widespread version is the Hyakunin-Isshu, which was originally an anthology of 100 poems compiled in the 12th century.These were then assembled into a deck of cards, with each card containing a single poem in calligraphic form. The game is that two or more people will sit in front of the spread-out deck, while another person reads the poems at random. The contestants then have to find the appropriate card and pick it up before their opponent does. This is actually a very big “sport” in Japan, with national championships, ranks, and the level of obsession Japanese people pour into just about everything. The “pros” only have to hear one or two syllables before they recognize which poem is being read, and their hand shoots out unbelievably fast. Here is one gorgeous video showing people dressed up in the ceremonial garb of the 12th century playing the game at Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto (a ritual carried out at the beginning of each new year), and here is a national news report about the national championships, with some great video showing how fast the pros are. Coincidentally, this is at the shrine where Genbo and Zoe go to daycare.
Anyway, Genbo got a deck of karuta for new year’s from his Japanese grandparents, although these don’t have the Hyakunin-Issue poems on them, but rather kotowaza, or Japanese proverbs. Being a confucian country, Japanese people are big at sprinkling proverbs into conversation. They learn them very early—five years old, in fact. Genbo already has his proverb cards memorized, and Zoe isn’t actually half bad either.
