Why Did the October Deer Turn Its Head Away?

Have you ever looked closely at the deer on the October Hwatu card? Why on earth is this deer looking away, not at us? Here is the story of a deer that came out to see the maple leaves and its haughty (?) reason.

Deer Animal

Blue Ribbon

Maple Junk

Maple Junk

Why the deer turned its head away

In Japanese Hanafuda, the October deer is said to be turning its head away. There is a story that the word ‘shikato (しかと)’ came from this. The explanation is that ‘shika (鹿),’ the deer, was joined with ‘to (十),’ meaning the October card, and it came to mean ‘to pretend not to see, to ignore.’ In Korean, it would be something like ‘ssaeng-kkada’ (slang for brushing someone off). However, the origin of this word is also said to be just one of several theories.

The deer in this game’s picture has a yellow body with spots and stands among red maple leaves. Please check for yourself which way it has turned its head. Finding where the deer is looking is a small pleasure of its own.

Hidden pictures: black leaves among the red

If you look quietly at the two Maple Junk cards, black leaves and yellow leaves are mixed in among the red ones. It looks like one card holds the whole sequence of an autumn mountain turning red, falling into dark shade, and becoming dry fallen leaves, doesn’t it? Each card is like one day of autumn.

The story of Inoshikacho

In Japanese Hanafuda there is a combination called Inoshikacho (猪鹿蝶). It is a combination of collecting the July boar (inoshishi), the October deer (shika), and the June butterfly (cho) all at once. If our Godori is about collecting three birds, then in Japan there is a combination of collecting the boar, deer, and butterfly. It is said that this combination is not used in Korean Go-Stop. To meet the July boar, see

The Story of the July Boar

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Role in the game

• The October deer is an Animal. When 5 or more Animals are collected, 5 cards are 1 point and 6 cards are 2 points.
• The October blue ribbon is a Blue Ribbon. Collecting all 3 blue ribbons of June, September, and October gives +3 points!
• If the “Complete the Blue Ribbons” mission (the ribbons of June, September, and October) is drawn, the score of the round you win is x2.
• The two Maple Junk cards are just plain single Junk, but they are a reliable foundation for building up Junk points.

Especially for the Blue Ribbons, depending on which month the last card is from, it is easy to overlap with the cards of neighboring months, so if the opponent is holding one card, you may never be able to complete them. That is why the Blue Ribbons are half “reading the opponent holding the card.”

A little joke

You can call out, “Deer, look this way!” but it is no use. The October deer is the Hwatu table’s greatest master of playing innocent, pretending not to know until the end. Do not be upset when you lose. The deer turned away, so it is not your fault.