Made in New England. Thin stock white pine with breadboard ends in five colors. Known as "kakeba," a variant of a 13th Century European 7-player backgammon game which was taken to China and eventually onto Japan.
This is a 7-player variant of backgammon, It is meant to represent the movement of the seven celestial bodies among the stars. Each player represents one planet (only 7 planets were known). The game is played with three seven-sided dice. Each player has 7 men of his color piled upon the ace-point of his starting table. Play moves counter-clockwise. The men are advanced as in backgammon, but the starting point of the other players is skipped when it is occupied by more than one piece.