A VERY RARE SET OF 33 LACQUER KARUTA (PLAYING CARDS) BASED ON THE TALES OF ISE

Japan, 19th century, Edo period (1615-1868)

Each card of rectangular form with a roiro ground finely decorated in gold and iro-e takamaki-e, hiramaki-e, and e-nashiji, depicting a scene from a chapter of Ise monogatari (The Tales of Ise) to one side and either kami no ku (the first part) or shimo no ku (the second part) of a poem from the corresponding chapter on the other, the chapters including nos. 13, 34, 40, 65, and 124.

SIZE 7.5 x 5.2 cm (each card)

Condition: Very good condition with only very minor surface wear.
Provenance: British private collection.

With a wood storage box, inscribed to the cover.

A popular type of card game in Japan involved matching the opening and closing lines of famous poems written on two separate cards. Players would certainly have been familiar with the poems, even knowing them from memory. Whoever matched the most pairs of verses won the game. Commonly such playing cards were made of paper, making these extremely finely lacquered karuta exceedingly rare.

The Tales of Ise (Ise monogatari) is a Japanese uta monogatari, or collection of waka poems and associated narratives, dating from the Heian period. The current version collects 125 sections, with each combining poems and prose, giving a total of 209 poems in most versions. Theories vary as to the identity of the author, with some suggesting that it began as an autobiographical work by Ariwara no Narihira and others speculating that the stylistic similarities to passages in the Kokin Wakashū point to Ki no Tsurayuki as the author. Others have, based on the title of the work, guessed that it may have been composed by the poet Ise, but this is generally taken as unlikely, as none of the other known works of this period use the names of their authors as their principal titles.

The narrative makes little attempt to link the sections, but introduces or provides a scene for the composition of the poem. A rough chronology of the central character's life is established through the sections, from the 'young man who came of age' in section 1, through numerous adventures and loves, to the man who fell gravely ill and 'knew in his heart that he was to die', in section 125. This neither produces a traditional biography, nor even a traditional plot, as seen from a Western perspective.