Thanks for all your help.
I stumbled across another Japanese deck I am considering, but would like to see more images if I can find them of course.
Ukiyoe Tarot
Have you ever seen or heard of this deck?
Ehh, I've
seen it, but it's never been a deck that called to me. It kind of smacks of cultural appropriation in one sense, which is something that irritates me. Fujitsu Koji, the artist, probably has some training in the ukiyoe tradition -- at least the compositions look right -- but the coloring is wonky and (worse) the characterizations seem contrived.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the choice to depict King Enma on the Death card, but I also believe that the deeper cultural associations are radically different than their surface layers. And depicting a courtesan for a Queen is a little dubious. Now, you can make the argument that certain courtesans were basically celebrities in the pleasure quarters and could -- to a certain extent -- decide aspects of their futures, but that was VERY rare. And handlebar/broom mustaches were not
en vogue in Japan until the Bakumatsu era (1854~).
It looks like "traditional" Japanese images were hamfistedly shoved into the structure of the Tarot...
I don't have the deck, so take these opinions with a grain of salt... Still, it is also for these precise reasons that I don't own the deck.
