I got into Japanese hanafuda about a year ago – bought my own deck and everything. Recently I bought a beautiful sparrow-themed western/hanafuda hybrid deck that unfortunately lacks the kana on the poetry ribbons. I decided to rectify it by handwriting it on the card myself.
However, as I started researching the kana on the cards themselves, I noticed something curious. On the [January and February ribbon cards](https://steve-p.org/cards/hana2/cardssm/sm_Hana-01-02.jpg), the kana supposedly reads あかよろし. However, the か looks very much like a の at first glance.
Can anyone tell me why this is the case? At a closer glance, I can see what looks like the right stroke of the か underneath the あ; is this a case of sloppy handwriting? Or is there something more going on here – is this maybe a cursive variant of a kanji, perhaps?
I’d be grateful for any clues.
2 comments
Apparently, this is something even native speakers puzzle over: https://cocorety.net/ippan/100029.html
It’s not that the other stroke is the stroke of か, it’s a different character altogether (that’s still a か). It’s [Hentaigana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentaigana), it apparently came from 可 instead of 加. So the cursive kanji variant isn’t far off, as that’s where hiragana came from anyway.
They’re non-standard, but are used for ye olde timey writing.