Fusajiro Yamauchi

Japan Society of Boston
Nov 13
5 min read

Nintendo's first headquarters in Kyoto, Japan in 1889

As the creator of major franchises like Donkey Kong, Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Pokémon, to name a few, one may think Nintendo is a company founded in the 1980s, when it was actually started by Fusajiro Yamauchi in the 1880s. The eldest son of Sosuke Fukui, Yamauchi was born in November 1859 in Kyoto, Japan, but was adopted at the age of 5 by Yushichi Yamauchi. In Japan, these types of adoptions were used as a way to continue the family name or pass down their estate when the family either has no male heirs or the male heir doesn’t want to join the family’s line of business.

In 1873, at the age of 14, Fusajiro Yamauchi inherited the family business and, by the time he was 18, he took over the lime wholesale business his parents had been helping with and founded Haiko Honten (Nikkei Business Editorial Department). It wasn’t until 1889, when he was 30, that he founded a company that was then called Nintendo Koppai (骨牌 - trading cards).

As arcades and video games would not be created until many decades later, Nintendo started as a company that made hanafuda (花札 - playing cards consisting of 12 suits of 4 cards, each suit representing a month indicated by a flower) and karuta (歌留多 [but usually written as かるた or カルタ] - traditional Japanese playing cards) playing cards. Dutch and Portuguese merchants introduced playing cards to Japan in the 1500s, but hanafuda traces its history back further to games played with painted shells (Bunting).

During the time Japan isolated itself from the outside world, hanafuda games were banned. This remained in effect for almost a century until 1885 when a ban on Western playing cards was lifted due to complaints from foreign officials (Pollard). The officials had argued that while gambling is a crime, the cards themselves are simply toys used in games, so their sale should be permitted (Sayawaka).

Yamauchi was able to market his business in ways that got him ahead of the competition. He was a great networker, so when he saw that playing cards and cigarettes were frequently bought by the same group of people, gamblers, he struck a friendship with Kichibei Murai, the first person to manufacture and sell paper-rolled cigarettes in Japan, and used Murai’s distribution network to sell his playing cards around Japan (Sutherland). This, however, wasn’t the only way Yamauchi tried to appeal to gamblers.

The cards Yamauchi made appealed to gamblers with the craftsmanship displayed in the production quality. Cheating is strictly prohibited in gambling venues, so gamblers placed great importance on the quality of the cards to prevent marking them (such as scratches or dents) and professional gamblers in particular would only use a deck of hanafuda once, and would draw new cards for each game (Nikkei Business Editorial Department). For this reason, Yamauchi was very particular about the cards' quality. In his book "Game Over: The Men Who Built the Nintendo Empire," David Sheff describes Yamauchi’s process of making the cards, stating:

Fusajiro made the paper used for Hanafuda cards using the traditional method, using the bark of the Mitsumata tree. He beat the bark to loosen it, mixed it with a little clay to make it heavier, strained it, dried it, and then stacked several sheets together to form a shape. Then stacked several sheets of this paper together to make a hard cardboard about the thickness of a book cover. He then pressed a wooden printing press, also of his own design, against the wide cardboard to print out the outline of the card. Next, he applied a stencil to the surface and filled in the design with dankoji made from flower petals and fruit. The background was red, and the grass was black. The full moon was left unpainted, leaving the base color of the paper intact (Sayawaka).

When the company first started, this process was done by hand by Yamauchi. Even though the practice of making cards by hand started to die out in Japan by the mid-1940s as the last artisans retired, Nintendo continued the practice through the early '70s when producing its hanafuda cards. Even when the cards were machine printed, the final step of pasting the backing paper onto the cards had been difficult to automate (Ashcraft).

When demand for his products exceeded his own ability, Yamauchi hired a small staff in 1907. Over the next 40 years, Yamauchi’s small business expanded into a major corporation, adding an expansive library of original card games developed specifically for Nintendo playing cards (Cohen). By 1926, Nintendo was the largest company in Japan.

Fusajiro Yamauchi had two children, but both were daughters. Without a son to whom he might pass the business, Fusajiro arranged a marriage in 1905 between his daughter Tei and Sekiryo Kaneda, an employee of the company. He then adopted Kaneda into the family like the Yamauchi family had adopted him, and they worked together until 1929 when Yamauchi retired and installed Kaneda as the second president of Nintendo (Bunting).

In 1940, Fusajiro Yamauchi died of a stroke at the age of 80. Despite being a company that was started over a century ago, Yamauchi was responsible for laying the groundwork for a company that is world renowned for its video game franchises and game consoles. And Nintendo hasn’t forgotten its roots: they still make hanafuda decks to this day and have even released a Mario-themed deck, linking their past with their present.

Playing Cards from Japan, including some made by Nintendo: https://www.wopc.co.uk/explore/country/japan/

Images of hanafuda cards made by Japanese brands, including Nintendo: https://games.porg.es/articles/cards/japan/hanafuda/traditional-manufacturers/

Visit

Nintendo Museum in Kyoto https://museum.nintendo.com/en/index.html

Works Cited

Ashcraft, Brian. “The Traditional Beauty of Nintendo’s Playing Cards.” Kotaku, 30 Mar. 2022, kotaku.com/nintendo-japan-hanafuda-cards-beauty-gambling-tradition-1848724872. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025.

Bunting, Geoffrey. “The Birthplace of Nintendo.” GamesIndustry.biz, 2 May 2022, www.gamesindustry.biz/the-birthplace-of-nintendo. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025.

Cohen, D. S. “Nintendo Founder Fusajiro Yamauchi Launches a WorldWide Game Sensation.” Lifewire, 19 Jan. 2020, www.lifewire.com/fusajiro-yamauchi-founder-of-nintendo-729584. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025.

Kohlstedt, Kurt. “Hanafuda: Japanese “Flower Cards” Designed to Circumvent Ban on Western Decks.” 99% Invisible, 2 Nov. 2018, 99percentinvisible.org/article/flower-cards-japanese-hanafuda-designed-to-circumvent-ban-on-western-decks/. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025.

Nikkei Business Editorial Department. “Nintendo, which started with Hanafuda cards, has grown rapidly through unique business development and is also exploring new markets.” Nikkei Business, 30 Mar. 2022, business.nikkei.com/atcl/plus/00003/032900015/. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025.

Pollard, George. “The History & Art of Hanafuda.” Ways to Play, games.porg.es/articles/cards/japan/hanafuda/art/. Accessed 11 Nov. 2025.

Sayawaka. “Why Was Nintendo Successful with Hanafuda?” Bunshun Online, 16 Feb. 2017, bunshun.jp/articles/-/1447. Accessed 10 Nov. 2025.

Sutherland, Adam. The Story of Nintendo. New York, Rosen Publishing Group, 2012.