Hyakuninisshu Rōmaji Karuta

The ultimate karuta for people who want to play karuta in Japanese but can not read Japanese characters. For the first time, you can play karuta in Japanese like in Chihayafuru - without knowing the Japanese characters!

What is Rōmaji? Rōmaji is the romanization of the Japanese written language. It is the transliteration of Japanese terms to the Roman text or other languages that use the Roman alphabet. There are different romanization systems of the Japanese language. This Rōmaji karuta uses the Hepburn system.

With these cards, you can play competitive (kyogi) karuta like Chihaya, or prepare for participating in karuta tournaments. All 100 poems are carefully transliterated to western (roman) letters and each card has a clue (kimariji) that helps you recognize the correct card.

This is the first Rōmaji Hyakuninisshu Karuta cards in the world. It uses the roman alphabet to write the original Japanese Ogura Hyakuninisshu. This means that you can listen, read and play in Japanese keeping the original meter and rhythm, like the Japanese have done for 400 years.

The cards have the original Japanese illustrations and texts from Shogundo printed on one side and the Japanese Hyakuninisshu poems in Rōmaji on the other side. This allows you to play with either Rōmaji or Japanese writings.

This karuta uses the 100 original Japanese poems used for competitive karuta (Ogura Hyakuninisshu). Written from 7th until the 13th century, selected by Fujiwara no Sadaie-Teika (1235), transliterated by Olayaselection (2020).