The Toy Museum 5 Playing Cards
by Kyoto Shoin, Nobuyoshi Hamada, Shunji Kamemura, and Besides the Western style playing cards (called torampu in Japan) three other kinds of card games are played in Japan: hyakunin-isshu karuta; iroha karuta; hanafuda. The word karuta is derived from the Portuguese carta or card.
(JP Oversized - 1992)
Excerpt - page 421: "... the company was founded in 1889 as a publisher of "Hanafuda" playing cards in Japan. From the mid-1980s through the 1990s, ..."