19th century Japanese Game ; Kai awase
A shell-matching game played originally among the upper class Japanese
during the Heian period (794-1185).
AD787 The first Viking attack on Britain.
The Kai-awase game is similar to a game of cards.
However, we did’t use paper cards but shells to play
a memory game.
The shells have been painted.
The point of this game is to find shells with the same picture inside.
The most popular subjects are flowers and episodes
from GENJI MONOGATARI 源氏物語 (The Tale of Genji).
mtsarai
The shells are placed facing down, and players
have to select the matching pair. However, this
was particularly difficult because a full set of
traditional kai awase shells contained 360 pairs
of shells!
Each calm shell only matches perfectly with the other half.
Thus, the shells are considered as a couple to be met for a
happy marriage.
Painting shells - You start by painting gold on the inside of the shells
and then you can draw simple pictures over the top, in which a romantic story for
each pair would unfold.
You can add a little water
and a tiny bit of plastic glue to the colours.
Or just cut two pictures to paste inside of the shells:
Japanese Shells Painting