Haiku
Haiku Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Principle of the Game
Each turn, each player secretly chooses one print from the 6 on offer.
To guide the other travelers, using the lines available to them, they must compose a haiku that evokes the chosen place.
If the other travelers succeed in identifying the place, the players get closer to home. If they make a mistake, the demon advances.
Components
- 84 double-sided Haiku tokens (i.e. 168 lines), with a fabric storage bag
- 64 double-sided Print cards
- 11 Player cards and 11 Demon cards
- 1 Kokeshi pawn (the doll)
- 5 Torii individual boards
- 5 sets of 6 Print tokens
- 6 wooden Symbol tokens
Setup
- Shuffle the Print cards to form a draw pile. Draw 6 and place them in the center of the table. Assign each of them one of the 6 Symbol tokens by placing it above or below it.
- Place the Kokeshi next to the draw pile.
- Sort the 2 decks of cards (Players and Demon) in order: the card of value 1 on top of each pile, the card titled Defeat or Victory at the very bottom. Place these two decks close to the players.
- For a 2-player game: remove cards 1 and 2 from each deck.
- For a 3- or 4-player game: remove cards 1 from each deck.
- For a 5-player game: keep all the cards.
- Give each player a Torii board and a set of 6 Print tokens.
- Put the 84 Haiku tokens in the bag, then deal 8 to each player.
Course of a Round
1. Composing the Haikus
All players play at the same time.
Look at your 16 lines (fronts and backs) and observe the 6 prints.
Secretly choose one that you think you can get identified easily using 3 of your lines.
Select your Print token identical to the Symbol token of the chosen print. Place it face down in the notch at the top of your Torii board. Put the other tokens away face down.
Compose a haiku that evokes this print as well as possible by placing 3 lines on your Torii.
When all players have composed their haiku, move on to the next step.
2. Reading
Each in turn, in the order of your choice.
On your turn, read your haiku aloud, once or several times, at the request of the other players.
Note: You may, if you wish, add linking words to your 3 lines, or agree them (singular/plural, masculine/feminine), or even adapt their grammar.
The other players confer to guess which print you were inspired by when writing your haiku.
3. Choice
All the other players, after each reading.
When all the players have agreed and think they have identified the print that was the source of your inspiration, they place the Kokeshi on the corresponding print.
You can then reveal the right answer by turning over the Print token on your Torii.
If the Kokeshi is placed on the right print, bravo, the travelers advance! Discard the top card of the Players deck.
If the Kokeshi is placed on another print, alas, the demon advances! Discard as many Demon cards as indicated on the top card of the Players deck (one, two or three cards).
Repeat steps 2 (Reading) and 3 (Choice) as many times as there are players, so that all the haikus are read and interpreted.
Note: Several players may well have chosen the same print!
Then remove the 6 prints used, and replace them with 6 new ones.
The players also discard the 3 Haiku tokens they used and draw 3 new ones from the bag, so as to have 8 again.
You can then start a new round.
End of the Game and Victory Conditions
The players all win together as soon as the Victory card of the Players deck appears.
On the other hand, it is a collective defeat if the Defeat card of the Demon deck is revealed first.
Background
The Parade of the 100 Demons (Hyakki yako)
An old Japanese legend in which demons of all kinds gather on summer nights to pour into the streets of towns and villages. Whoever crosses their path disappears instantly. Descriptions and illustrations of these parades are found as early as the 15th century.
Haiku
The codes of haiku appeared in Japan from the end of the 16th century. It was not until 1891, however, that the word haiku became established. A word of the poem must relate to nature or describe a season (Kigo). The translation of the codes from Japanese to French is necessarily subject to interpretation, as the languages and their pronunciations have evolved and are different.
In France, the most rigorous haijin (haiku authors) propose a strict interpretation with a structure of 2 lines of 5 syllables framing a line of 7 syllables. We opted for a less constrained structure and lines in order to leave more freedom to the players.
Japanese Prints
They knew their golden age under the Edo era (1603-1868), a long period of peace, with strong urban development favorable to the rise of a bourgeoisie. This new social class, not yet rich enough to afford original paintings, was however able to buy these inexpensive paper reproductions, printed from a carved wooden block.
From this block, a good printer managed to print about 300 prints before losing the fineness of the details. This popular appeal also corresponds to the appearance of a new artistic movement (Ukiyo-e) that could be translated as "life as it happens before our eyes". The most popular themes were scenes of daily life, sex, Kabuki theater, sumo, the pleasure district and its geishas, then later landscapes, monuments and the natural wonders of the country.
In 1858, Japan was forced to trade with the Western powers. Japanese prints spread quickly in Europe and America.
Notes on the Prints Reproduced in This Game
Even though we tried to stay as close as possible to the original prints, we sometimes had to take some liberties with their framing and colors. The titles of the works also vary according to languages and translators. The same illustration has sometimes had several successive editions, with woodcuts that may differ from one version to another, and colorings that may also be very different.
There are often several copies of the same print. They are scattered in museums or private collections, and their conditions of preservation make each of these prints a unique document.
Hokusai and The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Katsushika Hokusai, whom the Japanese nicknamed Gakyojin (the old man mad about drawing), is one of the great masters of Ukiyo-e. A prolific artist born in 1760, at the age of 70, from 1830, he decided to move away from traditional themes to draw a series of 36 images titled "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji". 10 other images were added with the commercial success and the following editions.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is one of the 36 original views and is today the best-known print in the world.
At the beginning of the 19th century, techniques had evolved and prints were now the result of successive impressions of the same sheet on several carved wooden blocks, one per desired color.
Prussian blue, a chemical pigment, had just arrived in Japan. It was the first time Hokusai decided to use it. Preferred to indigo, Prussian blue in its intensities evokes at once the power of the wave, the depth of the abyss and the telluric force of the volcano.
It is said of this masterpiece that it inspired the first Impressionists in France.
Ando Hiroshige
Born in Edo in 1797 into a samurai family. Until 1830, his works were limited to portraits of women, actors or warriors.
The turning point came in 1832, when he accompanied the shogun's procession on the Tokaido road, linking Edo (Tokyo) to Kyoto. He then took up landscapes and published "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido", which describe all the stages offered to the traveler on the famous "road of the Eastern sea".
He published a prolific body of work of more than 8,000 catalogued prints. In his preface to the "100 Views of Mount Fuji", published after his death in 1859, he wrote: "Master Hokusai published a series of One Hundred Views before me. In it he transformed Mount Fuji and nature to create his own world. As for me, I can only copy the nature of things. Thus my works are like photographs."
Hasui Kawase
If Hokusai and Hiroshige created their work in the first half of the 19th century, Hasui Kawase is in a way their heir of the early 20th century. It was indeed in the 1920s that, under the impetus of the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, the Shin-Hanga movement, or "pictorial renewal", was born in Tokyo.
Bunjiro Kawase was born in 1883 and published nearly 600 prints which today give him the title of Japanese master of landscape. His artist name (Hasui Kawase), meaning "water gushing from a spring", was given to him as early as 1910.
Unfortunately the great earthquake of 1923 destroyed most of his drawings and sketches. Watanabe then financed a great journey across Japan so that the artist could reconstitute his work.
This fruitful collaboration continued until his death in 1956, and leaves us an unmatched description of Japan in the first part of the 20th century.
Expansions
- KIGO - 100 LINES: Add 100 additional lines and increase the evocative power of your haikus. Create 10 lines yourself to personalize your game!
- HIROSHIGE: Add 48 additional prints by the great Japanese master to your game. Discover the landscapes of Japan in the early 19th century.