The Japanese government had placed a ban on all gambling in Japan, and subsequently cards with numerical symbols on them were taken out of circulation. The government, however, did allow Hanafuda cards, mostly because they weren't generally associated with gambling and had illustrations in lieu of numbers. Still, by the time Hanafuda had been introduced they had relatively little appeal to the Japanese populace. It could be said that they were expected to run their course just as quickly as they arrived. A man by the name of Fusajiro Yamauchi, however, saw the potential in the market and came up with a plan to re-introduce the game to Japan by crafting hand drawn illustrations on cards made of mulberry tree bark. Hanafuda cards were smaller than the archetypal Western cards which had previ