Fusajiro Yamauchi
Quick Facts
Biography
Fusajirō Yamauchi (山内 房治郎, Yamauchi Fusajirō, November 22, 1859 – January 1, 1940) was a Japanese entrepreneur who founded the company that is now known as Nintendo.Yamauchi lived in Kyoto, Japan and had a wife and a daughter, Tei Yamauchi (who later married Sekiryo Kaneda.
Nintendo Koppai
On November 7, 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi opened the first “Hanafuda” (flower cards) card shop called “Nintendo Koppai”, during a time when the Japanese government was banning playing cards from the hands of the public, due to them being tied to gambling, with the exceptchi's playing cards. With the huge success he had in selling these cards, he rapidly began expanding and opened another card shop in Osaka. He later went on to create more card games.
Retirement and death
Fusajiro departed from the company in 1929, lg his son-in-law Sekiryo Kaneda (whose name had changed to Sekiryo Yamauchi) in charge of the company. Fusajiro remained uninvolved in the business for the remainder of his life, which ended after a stroke led to his death in 1940. Fusajiro's grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, took over Nintendo in September of 1949 and ran the company for 53 years, transforming it into a multibillion-dollar video gaming company and global conglomerate.