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Japan: A group of four Japanese women in traditional dress playing uta garuta poem cards, c. 1900

Japan: A group of four Japanese women in traditional dress playing <i>uta garuta</i> poem cards, c. 1900

Uta Garuta (lit. poem cards) is a card game in which 100 waka poems are written on two sets of cards that make up one full deck of 200 cards. One set is yomifuda or 'reading cards', and the other is torifuda or 'grabbing cards'.

As they were denoted, the words in the yomifuda are read and players have to find its associated torifuda before anybody else does to complete a poem and recite it.

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