EDO PERIOD (MID-19TH CENTURY)

The Hyakunin isshu is a selection of one hundred waka [thirty-one syllable poems] by one hundred famous poets from the seventh to the thirteenth century. During the Edo Period it served as a kind of popular introduction to classical poetry and even formed the basis of a card game, which evolved under the influence of European playing cards. There are usually two hundred cards, half of them with the portrait of one of the poets and the first part of his or her poem, and the other half with the remainders of the poems. Hyakunin isshu is basically a memory game requiring both perfect recall of the hundred poems and the ability to remember the location of the cards as they are turned over and then turned back face down again, the object being to form the largest number of pairs.