Uta-garuta

Uta-garuta, meaning poetry karuta, is a type of Japanese traditional card game built from a specialized deck of karuta cards. The standard set used is drawn from the Hyakunin Isshu, a classical anthology of one hundred waka poems by one hundred different poets that was compiled by the poet Fujiwara no Teika during the Kamakura period, and a full set of uta-garuta contains two matching decks of one hundred cards each, one bearing the full poem and the other bearing only its concluding lines. In the common Chirashi-dori style of play, three or more players race to be first to locate and claim the correct matching card as a reader recites each poem aloud, while a team based Genpei-gassen style pits two teams of one or more players against each other across a shared row of cards. Since the early twentieth century the game has been played mostly during the Japanese New Year holidays, when memorized recitation of the Hyakunin Isshu and quick reflexes in spotting the matching card combine into both a social pastime and, in its competitive form, a demanding test of memory and speed contested in organized tournaments in Japan.