It took our ancestors many ages to establish a nation of kindred race and
language, to endeavor to be a morality-loving people, to declare this sun-rising
country Japan, and to fly the national flag.
In World War II in which Japan fell victim to the atomic bomb for the first time in the world, burned-out cities were in ruins, war victims and unemployed people overflowed into the streets, many war orphans survived.
The Gunma Relief Association, the predecessor of the present Gunma Cultural Association, was active in supporting war victims, fighting its way in bitter life, with local love and national pride, under the flag of two white pegeons face to face on the background of the green earth.The homegrown "Jomo Karuta cards" was published with two sets of 44 reading and picture cards and accompanying explanations of the Karuta cards, under the slogan "Let the wise provide wisdom, the able ability, and the rich riches", by the cooperation of many people who answered the appeal for contribution.The Jomo Karuta was produced in accordance with the enactment of the Juvenile Welfare Law, and was recommended as a cultural asset under the Law.
Children in those days learned from the reading and picture cards in their little case the existence of noted places, historical spots and heroes unknwn to them, and must have yearned for them.
The card game of old Japanese tradition was used as a substitute for textbooks on history, geography and moral education because they were temporarily curtailed by the Allied occupation forces after the war. Gunma's First Jomo Karuta Game Championship started two months after the publication of the cards.
It was proposed at this championship that the two reading cards, "Gunma Prefecture, shaped like a crane in flight." and " Gunma's population, a combined force of two million." should be the spiritual props of the Gunma people. Since then no alteration has been made to all the reading cards except that the then population of 1.6 million has now increased to 2 million.
The crane represented in the shape of Gunma Prefecture from early times, as the verse says " Gunma Prefecture, shaped like a crane in flight.", carries a hidden message to children that " poverty is not a shame. Since you ride the crane, a symbol of happiness and longevity, you are encouraged to bear hunger, help each other and fly out full of hope toward the future ".
This card was another message to six hundred thousand Japanese who wintered for the second time in captivity and engaged at forced labor in Siberia, that their country would not abandon them, not fail to relieve them from suffering there, and that we wished they would survive till they touched down at the homeland, leaving their heart with cranes migrating southward from Siberia. It was a message of encouragement to their family back in Japan as well as a call for the relief campaign. This spirit has been handed down to the present time as the starting point of the Jomo Karuta.
The Gunma Cultural Association would like to convey its predecessor's prayers to the world, as a human wish for " benevolence and charity " as the term "humanity " implies.
