Poetry as a Game: Literary Entertainment in Japan from the Heian era till present time

Abstract

This article gives a brief overview of key literary entertainment in Japan, by attempting to analyze the use of poetry within the country’s culture of gaming that can be traced back to the Heian era (794-1185). Over time, Japanese gaming traditions and therefore its series of iconic intellectual entertaining games have turned into symbols of the country’s national culture which continue to be studied both nationally within and abroad. For example, one popular game of poetic cards was based on the famous poetic anthology of the XIII century “One hundred poems by one hundred poets” (“Hyakunin isshu”) in the XVII century. This alone shows the great role within literary and poetic arts, underlying the foundations of the traditional written and everyday culture of Japan. Today, Japanese society continues to successfully develop new forms of national culture archetypes.