kabufuda

Noun

kabufuda (usually uncountable, plural kabufuda)

1. (usually) Small, rigid Japanese playing cards, a single deck consisting of 40 cards with values ranging from 1 to 10, used for playing hand-comparing betting games such as oicho-kabu.
   • Nowhere do these cards survive in more interesting form than in Japan, where, as Mekuri-fuda or Kabu-fuda, they are used for gambling games.1975, Harold Osborne, editor, The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 629
   • The top features two playing cards: the topmost card is the sakura curtain card for March from a hanafuda deck, as found on the Shōwa Neon Takamura Kanban Museum example, and the other is the roppō, or number six card, taken from a kabufuda gambling deck.2017, Alan Scott Pate, Kanban: Traditional Shop Signs of Japan, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 158