Readers, do you know what karuta is? Karuta is a traditional Japanese card game with multiple variations, one of which is called “kyogi karuta (competitive karuta).” Competitive karuta uses one hundred cards each bearing a short poem by a different famous Japanese poet, called “hyakunin isshu (one hundred people, one poem each).”
On July 14th, the Musashi Urawa Japanese Language Institute was visited by Junko Okumura, a teacher at Sakado Senior High School, University of Tsukuba. In addition to teaching language arts, Ms. Okumura also acts as the head of the extracurricular karuta club at her school. She is actively trying to promote the game of karuta in foreign countries, to which end she recently organized a “Beijing Karuta Competition” with students from the Japanese department of the Beijing University of Technology.
When she visited our school, she instantly grabbed the students’ attention with the traditional kimono and divided skirt that is worn at formal karuta competitions. Our advanced students who had played the game before were particularly interested, thereby encouraging us to continue this kind of hands-on cultural education in the future.