JAPANESE PLAYING CARDS (FLOWER CARDS) are called 'Hanafuda' or 'Hanagaruta' in Japanese. A set of them consists of 48 cards. There are 12 kinds of suits and each suit has 4 different cards. The12 suits, which have seasonal floral designs, i.e. pine, plum, cherry, wisteria, iris, peony, bush clover, Japanese pampas grass, chrysanthemum, maple, willow and paulownia, stand for 12 lunar calendar months. Each card has a point value, depending on suit or pattern.
By the way, one of the main products of Nintendo, which is famous for family computers, used to be these playing cards.
CALLIGRAPHY is a creative art form which attempts to express spiritual depth and beauty by means of kanji and kana characters written with a brush and sumi, or ink.
The art of beautiful handwriting is practiced in the West, too; but because of the complexity of the kanji character, each of which has a meaning, and the use of a brush which allows the strokes to be made softly or firmly, thick or fine, calligraphy as an art is more highly developed in China, Korea and Japan.
Although appreciation of a work of calligraphy depends on the beauty of expression (brush strokes, structure, color of sumi, arrangement etc.) and content (style, meaning), as the writing expresses the personality of the writer, a good work is considered to be one that moves the observer.
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