Hanafuda references in Izana & Kakucho
I love how full of references all of Tokyo Revengers is, so here's a thread about the links to hanafuda around Izana and his kingdom!! Cause it's a week till S3 and I'm excited!!
As expected, his earrings are the best place to start from.
So first of all, I'll explain what the hanafuda deck is and which card from it they're representing.
Even though they only contain pictures without any visible numeric value or indicator, hanafuda are playing cards. They surfaced exactly like this in order to avoid prohibitions around gambling way back in the Edo period, when foreign playing cards were banned. These slipped much more easily under the radar.
As such, hanafuda became kind of a discreet symbol of the illegal. Peony cards were a sign of prostitution, for one, and the whole deck was a staple of gambling. Which is why, even though that time passed and hanafuda cards did stay as regular playing cards, it's fun to have the leader of a criminal group wear one.
Izana's card is the Full Moon, a highly-ranked card within the game (one of the 5 "lights" or "bright cards" which give the most points).
The hanafuda deck is distributed by months, in 12 groups of 4 cards each; each month also has an assigned flower/tree that appears in the 4 cards, visually tying them together. This card of the full moon over the pampa is part of the August set, matching Izana's birthday month!
But the hanafuda references aren't only around him. Moving on to his servant:
Kakucho's name (just Kakucho, mistakenly believed to have a surname due to a faulty fantranslation) is made of the kanji 鶴 (kaku) and 蝶 (chou), which mean "crane" and "butterfly". Both hanafuda cards.
The crane card is part of the January set and is one of the Lights, as it also depicts the sun over the pine trees. Being a Light, getting it alongside the full moon card is really advantageous and can build you some of the most point-earning hands. The butterfly card is part of the June set, depicting butterflies over a peony flower.
Both cranes and butterflies are thematically assigned to Kakucho! Taking a close look at his volume cover outfit, a crane pattern can be seen on the fabric, as well as a butterfly wing shape on the bottom of the jacket. Motifs that Wakui selected carefully for him.
( scan/translated commentary from @yokohamabeans )
What's more… take a look at Izana's recent illustration for the Nov 2023 TR Expo, 'cause it's pretty interesting in this regard.
Aside from the peacock motif and the yin-yang that were used for this outfit, there's a little cameo on the inside of the jacket: a crane. If you zoom in and take a good look at the bird's head, you can tell it apart from the peacocks. And another one, even harder to spot, so tiny that @anantagonist had to point it out to me: a butterfly, right above that.
No other Tenjiku member is linked to hanafuda references (the Haitani brothers have their assigned flowers, neither happens to match the flowers depicted in the deck), but Izana and Kakucho sure are closely linked through it. It's something they alone share.
Isn't it cool? Let me know if you dig this kind of reference-listing posts, 'cause with TR there is so much to dig into.
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