Today, Tuesday, 23 September, 2014, marks a century and a quarter (125 years, or 45,655.3 days) that Nintendo was founded, in Kyoto, Japan, by Fusajiro Yamauchi (born on Tuesday, 22 November, 1859; died on January of 1940), as Nintendo Koppai.
In the year 1929, Fusajiro Yamauchi’s adopted son-in-law (more on the adopted son-in-law later in this blog post) Sekiryo Yamauchi, (born as Sekiryo Kaneda, also known by just his first name; born in the year 1883; died in the year 1949), took over the company as president after his father-in-law retired.
In the year 1933, Sekiryo Yamauchi renamed the company to Yamauchi Nintendo and Company (commonly known as Yamauchi Nintendo & Co.) after establishing a joint venture with another company; it is unclear the name of the other company and what type of company it was.
In the year 1947, Yamauchi Nintendo & Co. was renamed to Marufuku Company Limited (commonly known as Marufuku Co., Ltd.) after Sekiryo Yamauchi established the latter distribution company to distribute the Hanafuda cards, as well as several other brands of cards that had been introduced by Nintendo.
In the year 1949, Hiroshi Yamauchi (born on Monday, 7 November, 1927; died on Thursday, 13 September, 2013), Fusajiro Yamauchi’s grandson (more on his grandson later in this blog post) took over the company as president after his grandfather passed away.
In the year 1951, Hiroshi Yamauchi renamed the company to Nintendo Playing Card Company Limited (commonly known as Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd.); two years later, in the year 1953, the company became the first company to manufacturing mass-producing plastic-coated playing cards, in Japan, after having seen the playing cards being made in this fashion in the Western World.
In the year 1959, Nintendo reached its first success after Hiroshi Yamauchi struck a deal with Disney to allow Nintendo to use Disney characters on their playing cards, including selling books to explain to the playing card player(s), or even to the book reader(s), the different games one could play with the cards.
In the year 1962, Nintendo listed stock on the Second Section of the Osaka Securities Exchange and on the Kyoto Stock Exchange, after the company went public in the same year it listed stock, due to its success with Disney.
In the year 1963, Hiroshi Yamauchi renamed the company again for the second and last time to what is now widely known as Nintendo Company Limited (commonly known as Nintendo, sometimes known as Nintendo Co., Ltd., pronounced in the Hepburn Romanisation system as NintendÅ Kabushiki gaishaafter).
Fusajiro Yamauchi had only one child throughout his life, which this child was a girl named Tei. This meant that he did not have a son to take over the family business after retiring from good or bad health, or if he suddenly passes away, as it was a common Japanese tradition for sons to take over their fathers business in case any of those issues occur. Since he did not have a son, he decided to adopt his son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda, as his own son in order to keep the business up and running, and, most importantly, to keep it in the Yamauchi Family Tree.
Sekiryo Kaneda, now Sekiryo Yamauchi, followed in his father-in-law’s, now father’s, footsteps, in the year 1929, after the former had retired. So much so that he, too, had only one child throughout his life, which this child was also a girl named Kimi. Hoping that his son-in-law would be his future adopted son, things turned to a sudden twist for Sekiryo Yamauchi after his son-in-law abandoned Kimi and their only son, Hiroshi Yamauchi. The abandonment meant that Sekiryo Yamauchi’s grandson will take over the business in the future, in which he did so in the year 1949, after his grandfather retired after suffering a stroke and had died shortly afterwards from complications of a stroke.
