Nintendo -- Japanese "hanafuda" Flower Cards
48 cards

Flower cards were invented in Japan, possibly in order to circumvent anti-gambling laws against playing with conventional 4-suited card decks. Flower cards are much smaller in size than conventional cards (less than half size of standard poker cards) and also much thicker (as thick as credit cards). Japanese flower cards are called "hanafuda". The most popular Japanese game played with flower cards is "koi-koi" similar to the Korean game Go-Stop. Another game that can be played with a hanafuda deck, if the last two month are discarded, thus making a deck of 40 cards, is oicho-kabu, but the game is usually played with a kabufuda deck.

Flower cards are divided into 12 groups, each group representing one of the 12 months of a calendar year. Each month consists of 4 cards, however, the 4 cards of each month do not consist of cards of the same value, so any one of the 12 months could consist of 1, 2, or 3 "junk" cards, up to 1 "banner" card (with the possibility of 3 different kinds of banners, also called "ribbons"), up to one "object" card (also called "animal" cards although some of them feature non-living objects), and up to one "light" card (also called "bright").

The cards are listed here starting from January on top, down to December. It should also be noted that compared to a Korean hwa-tu deck, the original Japanese flower cards have the last two months (November and December) flipped.

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