Beautiful Hyakunin-Isshu cards deck review

A quick introduction of Japanese unique Hyakunin-Isshu card deck. “Hyakunin-Isshu” is a classical Japanese 100 poems, compiled by Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241).

If you are familiar with the world of Hyakunin Isshu, you’ll be able to use this cards as your new oracle card deck.

Kiyokawa Asami Hyakushin Issa <ピンク> Pric[ 清川 あさみ ]e: 4,400 yen (tax included, free shipping) (as of February 23, 2021) Buy at Rakuten

Its Designs

This deck includes 100 reading cards and 100 playing cards that corresponds to each reading card.

(The upper row: reading cards, lower row: corresponding playing cards)

All designs of 100 reading cards

All designs of 100 playing cards

Each artwork is finished in a patchwork style with Japanese images, combining yarn, cloth, beads, foil, etc. However, the card itself is merely a photo of each artwork. In addition, the size of each card is too small to enjoy its artworks and textures fully anyway.

Overview/Features

It is 55 x 75 mm in size and is almost the same as the most common Hyakunin Isshu Karuta cards decks.

In addition to the deck, a piece of A3 size paper is included explaining the meaning of each song and the author.

Personal Impressions

What I Like

Hyakunin-Isshu cards deck itself is nothing new, but this deck is new because of its artwork, that make me re-evaluate the beautiful wabi-sabi world of Hyakunin-Isshu poems.

For some people this deck is suitable to use as an Oracle card deck. Each card has one poem and its world, such as each card in a tarot or oracle deck has its own world.

What I don’t Like

Since it was printed on cardboard, the colour of the back of the card is grey.

I’m also wondering about quite a rough finishing. If you look at the written side of cards, the right side of the card are cut in the middle of letters (see photo below). Very annoying.

Where to buy

As of February 2021, this is available in various online stores. There are two versions of “pink” and “blue”, but the difference is only the colour of the cover of the box, and the contents are the same.

Wrap Up

To introduce 100 cards, one photo is not enough. For those who want to see more, we also prepared a video of this deck. Please have a look from below link if interested.