Playing cards were introduced to Japan by the Portuguese sailors whose ship entered the port of Kagoshima (southern Japan) on August 15th, 1549. Incidentally, among the ship passengers was a Jesuit priest by the name Francisco Xavier, who later became Saint Francis Xavier. He was traveling to the Far East to proselytize for Christianity. The crew brought on land a deck of Spanish playing cards. This is perhaps the reason for why the Japanese cards resemble the European cards more than they do to the Chinese ones.
The new, karuta, the Japanese version of the Portuguese word carta or “card” represented the “cards of the southern barbarians”, i.e. the Europeans, which became a fad and spread throughout the country. It is interesting however that how Japanese Artists adopted the cards into their own cultural icons.