The Early History of Nintendo

1889-1927

We’re doing something a little different on Substack this week. I spent a lot of time researching the most recent Codex: History of Video Games episode on the early history of Nintendo. So I decided to release the script I wrote here. I’ve edited some stuff out, like notes for me to pause and talk to Tyler. Regardless, here it is for you to read in full. Of course you can also listen for free on the podcast.

Today we’re talking about the early origins of Nintendo. I’m talkin’ 1889. My primary source for this episode is The History of Nintendo: 1889-1980 From playing-cards to Game & Watch by Florent Gorges. I might be using this book a lot in future episodes because the pre-video game Nintendo history is super interesting. They produced some pretty crazy toys using light gun technology, propaganda board games, and even off-brand Lego bricks at one point. Before we get started I need to give a big shoutout to Matt in Japan who helped me with Japanese pronunciations. Let’s get into it. 

So in order to understand the early days of Nintendo we need to have a little crash course on the history of playing cards in Japan. 

Playing cards are introduced to Japan through their first contacts with peoples of Europe. Mostly from Portuguese sailors, but definitely not all. This took place in the Muromachi era in the mid to late 1500s. The games sailors played were called “Carta” which then translated into Japanese became Karuta. These games pretty much took off straight away in Japan and became very popular among Japanese aristocrats. Local variants began to appear around this time as well. 

So all is great, right? Nope. If you’re familiar with Japanese history you might also be familiar with the Edo era of the 17th century. Now this is not a Japanese history podcast, so I’m going to T.L.D.R. this one. Essentially from 1603-1868 Japan went into a time of isolation from the world except for China, Korea, and the Netherlands. This is also a time of extermination of Japanese Christians and an overall ban on western culture. 

While this certainly was a dark time for Japanese history, this is also where our story really begins. As this is the beginning of what we now know of as Hanafuda cards. Numbers were removed from the cards, and replaced by the 12 months of the year. That with the four seasons makes a deck composed of 48 cards. Hanafuda, means flower cards, as most of the depictions of the seasons on the cards are represented by flowers. 

Hanafuda cards were primarily used for gambling during this period. This didn’t really fool anyone in the Japanese government at this time, and once again they were banned. Restrictions on Hanafuda cards did not subside until 1885. That’s why four years later in 1889 a thirty year old Japanese craftsman and avid player of Hanafuda named Fusajirō Yamauchi decided to start a company. Fusajirō Yamauchi actually trained in making games as an artisan for other companies before he decided to go independent and strike out on his own. Therefore we can conclude Nintendo is an indie game company. 

He built a small wooden stand in the Ohashi area of Kyoto. I’m blown away by the documentation of this. We actually have the date the shop opened. What would become Nintendo opened on September 23, 1889. According to a map of Kyoto at the time the shop was named Yamauchi Nintendo. Nintendo wouldn't have the name we know until 1933.

Now let’s take a brief aside here to talk about the name Nintendo. So, to many, and what I heard before reading this book, the name Nintendo translates to “to leave one’s fortune in the hands of fate.” 

Now, Gorges puts out a different reasoning. Using some alternate translations and meanings of the three syllables Nin, ten, and do. We could translate the meaning of Nintendo to actually mean “The temple of free hanafuda” or “the company that is allowed to make (or sell) hanafuda.”

However, Gorges admits there is no way to validate these claims. This is just a fun possibility. Hiroshi Yamauchi admits he doesn’t know for sure and we all as a collective group just go with the first definition “to leave one’s fortune in the hands of fate.” 

Now, let’s get back to the business of making Hanafuda cards. Fusajirō Yamauchi made these cards by hand with a few “young” employees. I’m guessing that means children. Just speculating here, but it’s the 1800s so probably children. I’m now going to read a brief passage from the book on how these cards are made.

Manufacturing hanafuda cards was much more complicated than it seems. Even if the cards were small (3,3x5,4 cm) they were nevertheless quite thick because of several layers of clay, wood and paper. There weren’t any machines capable of carrying out such complex tasks at the time, thus all cards had to be handmade, one by one. Yet, illustrating and coloring were made by printing panels engraved in wood. Colour, rendering and bark thickness weren’t always perfect, giving uneven quality to the finished product. Only the best were kept for sale, the others being destroyed. 

So as you can see, this was no easy task. So let’s talk about Nintendo’s first card games. They were called Daitoryo, which means “President.” They were said to be sturdy and pleasant to use. Here’s the fun part. The President cards had a picture of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Which begs the question why were they called president? Well, what historians surmise is Fusajirō Yamauchi confused Napoleon Bonaparte with US President George Washington.

The other game created by Nintendo in the early days was called Hakunin Isshu, which roughly translates to “one hundred people, one poem.” This was a game that combined  poetry, memory, and quick reflexes. Both of these games were popular but ran into a major issue, scale.

Once people in Kyoto owned a deck of cards, they rarely replaced them unless they became worn out. Therefore Nintendo sales began to drop after everyone got their initial set of cards. So now Fusajirō Yamauchi had to devise a plan to bring his sales back. His solution was to sell a wide range of cards at varying prices. Instead of throwing away the “bad” cards that were not up to standards. He made a new line of cards called Tengu. Tengu actually has some significance in Japanese culture at the time because that is not only the name of a legendary red-nosed Japanese character, but also the password used in many gambling halls during the repressive reign of the Tokugawas. In fact, the term nose and flower are both pronounced the same in the Japanese language. When people in Japan signaled they wanted to play cards illegally they would often rub their noses. The legendary red nosed character therefore had the connotation of hanafuda cards after the ban on the cards was lifted.

Yamauchi’s real success did not come from just broadening his prices however. What made Nintendo a powerhouse in hanafuda cards was Yamauchi’s business sense to market to the newly opened gambling halls of Osaka and Kyoto. These gambling halls were perfect because there was so much fear of cheating among players, many refused to use the same deck of cards twice. This meant that Nintendo was selling up to fifty decks a day to some gambling halls. Yamauchi purchased new equipment and began to ramp up production. Nintendo rose to being the number one hanafuda card manufacturer in Kyoto.

The timing of Yamauchi could not have been more perfect. Starting in 1868 Japan was going through a sort of renaissance period called the Meiji era. Some historians actually refer to it as the Meiji revolution. This is in contrast to the aforementioned Edo period before, of strict isolation from western culture. Now, Japan is opening up its borders to the people of Europe. Card houses form with western playing cards. There visiting Europeans teach them cricket, billiards, and card games with playing cards of hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs. Meanwhile Japanese people teach them Japanese chess, Go, and Mahjong. This is truly a time of cultural sharing. As a result, western playing cards and hanafuda have also become a nationwide craze in Japan. This is what creates those card houses where Fusajirō Yamauchi sells fifty decks of Daitoryo cards a day.

Fun fact that’s not important to the story of Nintendo, but related. Japanese people at this time do not have a direct translation for western playing cards, but the word they do pick up on is trump. Like this is my “trump card”. So western playing cards in Japan are called trump cards. This cultural card craze in Japan started in 1886, three years before the founding of the Nintendo company. 

So to sum up so far, Fusajirō Yamauchi can attest his success to not only the quality of his cards, but also his business acumen to start to sell the “faulty” cards at discount prices. That and the decision to go into business with card houses and gambling halls in Osaka and Kyoto, is how he stays afloat and makes the card business work.

The next move he made though, was truly what put him on the map. See, western Trump cards were expensive, as they had to be imported from Europe. Therefore, Yamauchi decided to make his own. He bought western card printing presses and began to make his own made in Japan western playing cards to make them more affordable. The date of manufacture of Nintendo’s first trump cards is unverifiable. Nintendo claims the year 1902, but the rumor that competes with it is 1904, when Russian prisoners of war needed entertainment in Kyoto, and their Japanese guard decided to work with Yamauchi to make them western style playing cards for entertainment. If this were true however we would’ve seen marketing materials from 1907, but since we don’t have any to know for certain—it’s all speculation. In fact, up until the 1990s Nintendo officially said 1907 was the first year of their trump cards, and then they changed it to 1902. So really no one knows. I think it’s safest to say “The first decade of the 1900s.”

Now Fusajirō’s timing once again could not have been better. He was the only Japanese company producing western trump cards at the time, and it turned out, these cards were much more profitable than hanafuda. At this time, Japan and Russia were at war and this caused massive taxes and inflation in Japan. The tax on games was called the Karuta Zei tax and an estimated 5000 craftsmen lost their jobs in the Kansai district of Kyoto and only the strongest manufacturers of games at this time survived. Fusajirō Yamauchi—because of his monopoly on Japanese manufactured western style playing cards in the Kansai District—survived. 

I think it’s important to note that at this time game makers were considered craftsmen. It’s a small niche occupation in which a craftsman would make a game, and sell it locally at a shop. There are no nationwide game companies in Japan. That is all about to change though thanks to Fusajirō Yamauchi’s idea to team up with another brand that is nationally distributed—history buffs probably could’ve guessed this—tobacco. In Japan in the early 20th century, the only goods distributed on a national scale were medicine and tobacco. Fusajirō Yamauchi decided to team up with Nihon Senbai, a distribution company that would be renamed Japan Tobacco. Now customers could buy cigars and a deck of Nintendo playing cards. 

This was the big jump to a national scale. Very quickly Fusajirō Yamauchi and Nintendo became the biggest playing card company in Japan. No one was even close. By the end of 1920s, with a successful business, the only thing Fusajirō Yamauchi needed was a successor. Having no male heir to take over his company he decided to do the next best thing. Marry his daughter off to one of his most loyal employees, Sekiryo Kaneda. Sekiryo Kaneda married Fusajirō Yamauchi’s daughter and took the name Yamauchi in 1929. He then became the second managing director of Nintendo.

Now Sekiryo Yamauchi doesn’t really have a lot about him in the book. Maybe two paragraphs, however I think it’s important to note he made a lot of very big, and good changes at Nintendo. He created a kids line of Karuta for educational purposes. His cards were renowned for their artistic beauty and were used in important events. 

Sekiryo Yamauchi is also the one who expanded Nintendo’s physical location to the famous original headquarters. This original HQ was, a very rare for Japan, stone building with a metal frame located next door to Fusajirō’s original location. Here’s a fun fact. According to Atlas Obscura, it’s now a hotel you can stay at!

Like Fusajirō Yamauchi, Sekiryo found himself without a male heir to take over the company. So he married his daughter, Kimi, to the son of a Nintendo artist: Shinkanojo Inaba. Like Sekiryo, Shinkanojo’s last name was changed to Yamauchi and in the book they say against his will. I think what they are inferring here is that Shinkanojo Yamauchi had no choice but to become the heir to Nintendo due to the arranged marriage. This book is translated from French so some of the phrasing is definitely hard to discern.

An important event brought Sekiryo Hamauchi into high spirits, in 1927 Shinkanojo and Kimi had a son, named Hiroshi Yamauchi. This means that after three generations the Nintendo company will have a rightful heir. Not only that, but the Yamauchi Nintendo company was the strongest it had ever been. Everything's coming up Millhouse as they say. Unfortunately, just when you think something is too good to be true, well, it usually is. 

There’s not a lot in the book as to why this happened. I’m sure there’s some speculation, but we’ll never really know. What we do know is shortly after Hiroshi Yamauchi was born, his father Shinkanojo abandoned the family. He left the company and disappeared. The family told Hiroshi Yamauchi his dad was sent to Mandchouria in China by the Japanese government. The 1930s were a time of Japanese colonialism. However, that was a lie. In reality, Shinkanojo Yamauchi would be considered a disgrace to his family. Shinkanojo did eventually attempt to reunite with his son in 1974, forty years later, because he was in bad health. Initially Hiroshi Yamauchi refused to meet him. Hiroshi Yamauchi did not agree to meet Shinkanojo Yamauchi until his third letter. That letter said meeting his son was the “last request of a dying man.” 

Not having a father figure is going to shape Hiroshi Yamauchi’s life most certainly. We will get back to that, and some more history of pre-video game Nintendo, next time on Codex: History of Video Games.