This is the reprinted edition of a work of Sumio Kawakami, a Japanese woodblock artist, made in 1960. His sensitivity toward the changes of the seasons is brilliant. Each suit is assigned four seasons; for example, clubs are spring, diamonds are summer, hearts are fall, and spades are winter. Moreover, each number is assigned motifs too; for example, there are fruits on the card numbered 7, so diamond suit (summer) has bright red water melons, and hearts suit (fall) has persimmons. It’s certainly that you enjoy the passage of seasons when you play sevens. These playing cards make us feel nostalgic for the seasons which are the root of a Japanese sense of beauty.

These are standard edition-make decks made by Richert Karuta rather than Oishi Tengudo, with plain 1-colored backs rather than silver-patterned ones like the Limited Edition. But! They do come with the same silver stamps you see on the limited edition on seven of the cards, and they also come in individual paulownia wooden boxes, in turn placed inside a wider paulownia box. The individual boxes are different from the Limited Edition in that they don't have gold hot-stamped on them, instead paper labels as on the basic standard edition. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/karuta/shiki-japanese-style-playing-cards/description