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These are cards from a hand-painted Japanese woodcut pack that was presumably produced in the second half of the 19th century.

The pack originally consisted of 100 poet cards and 100 text cards, but only twelve of each have come to my collection. The poet cards show a Japanese poet and one of his famous poems. The last two lines of the poem are on a text card. The game played with these cards is a matching game: you have to find the matching text card when the poem is read from the poet card.

As I cannot read Japanese, I am not at all sure that the text cards I show match the poet card they come with, and I am not even sure that the text cards are not upside down. When I showed these cards earlier I thought I was sure about the poets shown, but in the meantime I doubt that. You can try yourself to find out.

You can find more information on the poets and poems on a page of the Japanese Text Initiative, or using Wikipedia.

Amendment 1: I recently got another two pairs from the same antique dealer as the others, and they are obviously from the same pack. They are shown in the fourth scan on the left.

Amendment 2: And after a long time I got another two pairs, shown in the fourth scan on the right.