kabufuda

From Japanese 株(かぶ)札(ふだ) (kabufuda), a compound of カブ (kabu, “the 9 card in kabufuda”) + 札 (fuda, “card”). The former is borrowed from Portuguese cabo (“end”, for being the highest non-face card).

• IPA^(key): /ˌkɑːbuˈfuːdə/
• Rhymes: -uːdə

kabufuda (usually uncountable, plural kabufuda)

1. (card games) Small, rigid Japanese playing cards, a single deck consisting of 40 cards with values ranging from 1 to 10, used for playing hand-comparing betting games such as oicho-kabu.
   • 1975, Harold Osborne, editor, The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 629:

     Nowhere do these cards survive in more interesting form than in Japan, where, as Mekuri-fuda or Kabu-fuda, they are used for gambling games.

   • 2017, Alan Scott Pate, Kanban: Traditional Shop Signs of Japan, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 158:

     The top features two playing cards: the topmost card is the sakura curtain card for March from a hanafuda deck, as found on the Shōwa Neon Takamura Kanban Museum example, and the other is the roppō, or number six card, taken from a kabufuda gambling deck.

   • 2025, Tim Clare, Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human, Abrams Press, →ISBN:

     As hanafuda became more common, they were often used in place of kabufuda decks, with November and December removed and the rest of the months serving as pips, January for the ones, February for the twos, etc.

kabufuda

1. Rōmaji transcription of かぶふだ