Tag: High School

Recovering from Japan earthquake, reviving Japanese culture

In light of the terrible damage and trauma from the Great Tohoku Earthquake in Japan, I found this article by the Asahi Shinbun very touching. As mentioned in this post, high-schools in Japan often have a karuta club of some kind devoted to the Hyakunin Isshu poetry anthology, and the game which involves grabbing the right card (カルタ, karuta in Japanese) as the poem is read aloud.

The game involves three people: 2 people who compete, and 1 reader who reads the poem. The two competitors have to find the right card, containing the last two verses of the poem the reader recites. The reader of course uses a card with teh full poem. As the article explains, it’s important to be able to read a poem clearly, with the right tone and rhythm, or the two players might be distracted. The Hyakunin Isshu iPhone app I bought a while ago has nice, professional recitations of each poem.

Anyhow, quite a nice story to read about young people recovering from the Earthquake, and ancient cultural traditions that still thrive admist modern culture and natural disasters. 🙂

Hyakunin Isshu in High School

One subject I haven’t covered here much is the subject of the Hyakunin Isshu is the karuta card-game. I’ve talked about it on my other blog, but I saw this recent article on the Asahi Shinbun newspaper and wanted to talk this one in particular.

Photo by Koichiro Ohba, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

As the article explains, the Hyakunin Isshu card-game is one of many extra-curricular activities in Japan for kids, though usually not as popular as sports or other activities. Still it has a small, venerable tradition, and like many school activities, it can be pretty competitive, but a great team-building activity.

I was surprised to hear about the new comic about this sport though, titled “Chihayafuru“, which is related to poem 17 in the Hyakunin Isshu (the opening line), which also happens to be a famous pillow word too. I was thinking it might be interesting to read, except the cover implies that it’s a young ladies novel, and I am too old, and too much of a male neanderthal for that kind of thing. 😉

Update: I am reading the manga now. 😙

Update No. 2: Finally learned to play in 2023.