If you’re watching Jidaigeki “period dramas” or other Japanese historical movies about the Edo period, you may have noticed brief scenes with girls playing a kind of badminton. That is a traditional game called Hanetsuki, played with hagoita, rectangular wooden paddles often decorated with colored paintings.

In time, hagoita became a lucky charm and also a decorative collectible item. So today hagoita have been designated as traditional products of Tokyo and they are a lot more sophisticated than the original paddles, adorned with intricate details and textures made from washi Japanese paper and silk, representing kabuki stars or geisha…

Hagoita

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Yesterday’s Japan Photo: Kumade