(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Hidden History: The Japanese Yakuza and the Card Game of Koi-Koi [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-11-26 The card game of Koi-Koi is closely identified with the Japanese Mafia, known as Yakuza, which had its origin some 400 years ago in early attempts by the Shoguns to ban gambling and European playing cards. "Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history. A deck of traditional Japanese Hanafuda cards History When the Portuguese arrived in Japan in 1543, they established trade relations and introduced many elements of Western culture to the islands. The Japanese Shoguns, however, viewed this as a threat, and in 1636 the Tokugawa Shogun took the drastic step of expelling all the foreigners and sealing Japan off from the outside world. Japan would be isolated for the next 200 years. But there was one element of Portuguese culture that remained embedded in Japan—card games. European playing cards of that time had different suits than today, and they were used in a variety of gambling games. The Shoguns quickly outlawed this, but a thriving Japanese criminal underworld soon appeared. Illegal gambling dens were established on the outskirts of town, run by a class of criminals called bakuto (“gamblers”). Many of these were former samurai warriors who had become redundant when the Shoguns unified the country and ended the civil wars that had been raging for decades, and who now were compelled to use their organizational skills, and their weapons, for purposes which were … less than honorable. As with virtually all gambling enterprises in history, the bakuto made a lot of money, and soon expanded into loan-sharking for their clients and strong-arming the people who didn’t pay up. They also invested into legitimate businesses which they took over, where they were known as tekiya (“peddlers”). Over time, their wealth allowed them to become intertwined with the local Japanese governments, which gained them protection from the Shogun’s police. By the 18th century, the bakuto had established many of the cultural markers which would later be adopted by the Yakuza. Many bakuto were extensively tattooed, often with colorful full-body designs known as irezumi. Each local geographic area was organized into a hierarchical clan which reflected the authority structures of a traditional Japanese samurai clan. At the top was the oyabun (“foster father”) or boss, and under him were the kobun (“foster children”) or soldiers. If an underling offended or failed the boss in some way, he would apologize with the ritual of yubitsume, or cutting off the tip of a finger. This was a traditional samurai practice—by weakening his grip on a sword, a repentant samurai became more dependent upon the clan for protection. By the 1850s, Japan had once again been opened up to intercourse with the Western world, and the bakuto criminal element saw greater opportunities. The larger syndicates began to be referred to as yakuza, which means “8-9-3”, a losing hand in the card game Oicho-Kabu, and having the meaning of “good for nothing”. The Shoguns had outlawed gambling and the Western-style playing cards that were used for gambling, but the criminal gangs had gotten around this by producing a new style of playing card decks called hanafuda, which had no suits or numbers and which ostensibly appeared to be ordinary picture cards of Japanese flowers, and which were very small so they could be easily hidden. These cards were used for a number of gambling games, though, with one of the most popular of these being Koi-Koi. By the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, hanafuda and other playing cards were finally legalized, though “gambling” was still banned. By the time of the Second World War, the Yakuza were firmly entrenched, and in addition to gambling and loan-sharking they had control of other rackets like extortion, prostitution, and drug-trafficking. They also established a Robin Hood reputation with the Japanese population, often funding local civic groups and raising money, food and aid for victims of earthquakes, tsunamis, or other disasters. Even today the Yakuza like to refer to themselves as “the chivalrous organization”, while the police refer to them as “the violent gang”. The organization’s real power, however, came from its close ties to the Japanese government. With its reverence for traditional samurai hierarchy and ideology, the Yakuza held right-wing nationalist views which meshed closely with the militaristic and expansionistic views of the time, and Yakuza-influenced groups like the Dark Ocean Society were powerful forces that steered Japan into war using propaganda, intimidation, and assassination. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the United States occupied Japan, and tried to reform the entire country from top to bottom. But while the Americans were successful in eradicating the ideology of Japanese militarism and imperialism, and broke the power of the huge zaibatsu economic enterprises who had financed the war, they did not succeed in uprooting the Yakuza organizations. But then, they never really tried. With its cities bombed out and its industry in ruins, the entire Japanese economy was dependent upon the resources of the wartime “black market”—which was almost completely controlled by the Yakuza. In addition, the Yakuza “families” still had close political ties to the Japanese right-wing, and these political parties were now useful to the United States, which was making every effort to insure that post-war Japan remained friendly to the US in the Cold War and would not move towards the Sino-Soviet orbit. As membership in the Japanese Communist Party swelled during the 1950s from just 8,000 to over 100,000, Yakuza-organized gangs were given tacit approval to act as goon squads against the rising influence of Japanese leftists by cracking heads during labor strikes and student demonstrations. Yakuza smuggling rings in China, Korea, and Russia were also valued sources of intelligence information for the American CIA. The Yakuza thrived. It seems to have reached its peak membership in the 1960s, when police estimated there were over 180,000 kobun. Today this has declined to around 45,000 members organized into six major clans, the largest of which is the Yamaguchi-gumi. But the economic and social power of the Japanese underworld has increased even as their size has gotten smaller, as they have expanded further into legitimate business like taxi services, construction companies, bars and restaurants, trucking fleets, and labor contracting. They also dominate illegitimate enterprises such as Internet porn, embezzling, smuggling, and online gambling. The Yakuza is often acknowledged by international police agencies to be one of the richest criminal organizations in the world. Despite their waning influence in Japan’s political parties (due to a number of strict anti-Yakuza laws passed in the 1990s), this wealth has allowed them to maintain at least some ties to political power. It has also enabled the Yakuza to go global, and to form alliances and partnerships with other criminal networks around the world. Today, Japanese culture has evolved over time, and though most forms of gambling are still illegal, the country is now more accepting of some gambling-type games which are held to be harmless, like the immensely-popular Pachinko. And this includes Koi-Koi and other Hanafuda games. Most Americans know Koi-Koi through its inclusion in anime, manga, and computer games from Japan which depict Yakuza culture. Equipment Japanese card games are, alas, not easy for Westerners to learn. The Hanafuda decks are intentionally cryptic and try to hide their nature as gaming cards, and deciphering the cards requires some knowledge of Japanese culture and the symbolism of old mythology. The rules for Koi-Koi can also be quite complex. It helps to know some things about the cards, then. A Hanafuda deck consists of 12 suits, one for each month of the year, represented by pictorial representations of Japanese flowers. Each suit has 4 cards, for a total of 48 in the deck. Some cards also include representations of birds and animals, while others have red or blue ribbons or banners. Since there are no numbers or suits on the cards, each card can be identified only by the particular stylized flower illustration that they share. In order from January to December, these are: Pine Tree, Plum Blossom, Cherry Blossom, Wisteria, Blue Iris, Peony, Bush Clover, Susuki Grass, Chrysanthemum, Maple, Willow and Paulownia. The complete deck looks like this: The Hanafuda deck from WikiCommons These cards are further divided into several groups: Five cards are known as “Brights”, also called “Lights” Nine cards are known as “Earths”, also called “Animals” Ten cards are known as “Scrolls”, also called “Ribbons”, and consist of three Red Poetry Scrolls (with writing), three Blue Scrolls, and four blank Red Scrolls The remainder of the cards depict plain flowers (except for the November Willow, which depicts “Lightning” and has special powers in some rulesets) and are known as “Basics”, also called “Plains”, “Junks”, “Chaff”, or “Normals”. You get the idea—they are not worth much. Hanafuda decks from Japan are available online—Nintendo sells different versions including a Mario Brothers and a Pokémon. To make your own traditional deck, you can download the three templates at these links: www.flickr.com/… www.flickr.com/… www.flickr.com/... Print these three pages out onto heavy 8.5 x 11 cardstock, setting the image size at 6 x 10 inches. To strengthen and waterproof them, you can cover them on both sides with strips of wide clear packing tape before cutting out each of the 48 cards. To Play Koi-Koi I have collected the Boar, Deer, and Butterfly Yaku on the table, and the Geese card for another point, giving me a total of 6 points showing. Koi-Koi !!!! The Japanese phrase “koi-koi” means “let’s go” or “come on". This is a two-player game. There are many different versions of the rules which vary by geographical area in Japan, and many gambling houses had their own individual variants. You can go to 30 different rulesets for Koi-Koi and each will have different rules. They can be, alas, quite complex and complicated, and many of the card combinations are based on Japanese cultural conventions with which Westerners are unfamiliar. The ruleset given here is one of the simplest and is based on the one that can be found packaged with the Hanafuda decks still sold in Japan by Nintendo. The most difficult part of the game for Westerners is learning which cards are which and how they relate to each other to form sets. Many beginners use a “cheat sheet” with all the cards and all the Yaku sets and their point values printed out and illustrated. Since there are some advantages to being the Dealer (the “Dealer’s Privilege”), this is determined by chance: traditionally, both players draw a random card from the deck, and the one with the month that is closest to the beginning of the year wins. If both players draw the same month, the winner is determined by card rank: Brights beat Earths, Earths beat Scrolls, and Scrolls beat Basics. If both cards are the same month and rank, the players draw again. Most modern players, though, settle the whole “who deals” matter with a quick duel of “rock, paper, scissors”. The winner of each round then becomes the Dealer for the next round. A traditional Koi-Koi game lasts 12 rounds, but both players can agree to a shorter game of 3 or 6 rounds. The player with the most points after all rounds have been played is the winner. The Dealer deals out eight cards to each Player and places eight cards face-up in the middle of the table. This becomes the Field. The remaining deck is placed alongside the Field. This is the Stack. If the Field should happen to contain four cards of the same flower Month, or if there are four pairs of cards from different Months, it is a “mis-deal”, and all the cards are gathered, shuffled, and dealt again. If there are three cards from the same flower Month in the dealt Field, they are placed atop each other in one pile in the Field, and any Player who matches them later captures all three cards. Conversely, if either Player is dealt a hand which contains all four cards of one flower Month, or if the Player’s hand contains four matched pairs from different flower Months, that round ends immediately and that Player receives 6 points. In the event that both Players are dealt an instant win, the Dealer wins (Dealer’s Privilege) and gets the points, and the other Player gets nothing. If there is no mis-deal or instant win, then Player One (the Dealer always goes first) starts the game by selecting any desired card from his hand. If he can make a match of “Month” with one of the cards that are face-up in the Field, he may do so and takes both the matching cards, placing them face-up on the table in front of him (this area is called the “Library”). If the card in his hand matches two cards in the field, he may choose which one to capture. And if the card in his hand matches three cards in the field, he captures them all. If the Player cannot match any of the cards in the Field, he places his card face-up in the Field, where it becomes part of the Field. Next, Player One draws another card from the top of the Stack and tries to match it as above. If the Player cannot make a match with this drawn card, he leaves it face-up in the Field. Play then passes to the other Player. The object of the game is to assemble particular groups of cards, called Yaku, which are worth a specified number of points. There are ten of these sets: All 5 of the Brights: 10 points The 4 Brights not including the Rain Man: 8 points Any 4 Brights including the Rain Man: 7 points Any 3 Brights not including the Rain Man: 6 points Boar, Deer and Butterfly set: 5 points. 1 point for each additional Earth card. Any 5 Earth cards: 1 point. 1 point for each additional Earth card. All 3 Red Poetry Scrolls: 5 points. 1 point for each additional Scroll card. All 3 Blue Scrolls: 5 points. 1 point for each additional Scroll card. Any 5 Scroll cards: 1 point. I point for each additional Scroll card. Any 10 Basic cards: 1 point. 1 point for each additional Basic card. (There are other rulesets which have many more optional scoring Yakus, but we will stick with the basic ruleset to keep things simple. Once you learn the basic Koi-Koi game, you can find lots of optional rules online) When a Player assembles a Yaku set, he can choose to declare “Shobu” (meaning “Game”). That ends the round, and that Player receives all the points he is entitled to, while the other Player receives nothing. In addition, if the winner of the round has scored 7 or more points in that round, he is entitled to double his score for that round. Or, the player with the Yaku can call “Koi-Koi” (meaning “let’s go”) to continue the round. In that case, the round continues as before. If the Player who called “Koi-Koi” assembles another Yaku set before his opponent does, he can then call “Game” and end the round and collect all the points he is entitled to, while his opponent receives nothing. On the other hand, if the opponent assembles a Yaku of his own before the Player who called “Koi-Koi” does, then the Player who called “Koi-Koi” receives nothing, no matter how many points he has earned in that round—and the Player who assembled the second Yaku receives double the points that he has earned for that round. (And this can then be doubled again under the “7 points or more” rule.) Or, the Player who assembled the second Yaku can himself call “Koi-Koi”, in which case the round continues, with the next Yaku doubling the score again. Theoretically, this can continue until one player or the other is able to call “Game” and collect all his points. The winner of each round becomes the Dealer for the next round. If nobody has assembled any Yaku and called Koi-Koi before one of the Players runs out of cards, or if a Player has called Koi-Koi and one of the Players runs out of cards before someone calls “Game”, the round ends and neither Player gets any points.(Note that in some rulesets the Dealer would get all of the points he had collected instead, as part of the “Dealer’s Privilege”.) Player Two then becomes the new Dealer for the next round. The Player with the highest cumulative point total after the agreed-upon number of rounds, wins the game. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/26/2253857/-Hidden-History-The-Japanese-Yakuza-and-the-Card-Game-of-Koi-Koi?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/