Yoriai is a speculative card game imagining an alternative Japan where Sakoku, the country's closed-border policy, never ended, and gaming culture evolved entirely without Western influence. Developed during a semester exchange at Kyoto Institute of Technology as part of the UAL Global Collaborative Design Practice programme, the project asked: what does leisure look like when it is rooted in mental ease, communal harmony, and cultural tradition rather than competition and profit?

The game is location-based and multiplayer, played outdoors using prompt cards written as haiku and printed on washi paper with illustrations drawn from traditional woodblock crest patterns. Players forage natural elements from their surroundings to build individual and collective gardens, guided by Japanese values of coexistence, impermanence, and playfulness. Cards and playing fabrics are dyed using traditional techniques including shibori and dorozome.

The project was developed with a cross-cultural team of GCDP and KIT students and published on the UAL Postgraduate Community platform.