山内 房治郎 - Fusajirō Yamauchi & 金田 積良 - Sekiryo Kaneda

This time I wish to talk about entrepreneurs, and who's best than Fuajirō Yamauchi and his successor, Sekiryo Kaneda. Maybe if you hear these names, they won't ring a bell. But what if I say Nintendo? I'm pretty sure that's something you recognize here and in Japan (Get it? Gosh I'm hilarious). They are one of the biggest videogame and console creators at a worldwide level, with franchises like "Mario Bros.", "Pokemon", "Kirby", "Zelda", etc. They have also created consoles like "Gameboy", "Wii", "Game Cube", "Switch" and some more. But how this all this started?

Fusajirō Yamauchi 

It all goes back to 1889 when Yamauchi opened his store "Nintendo Koppai". Here he sold "Hanafuda" cards, which is a Japanese card game. He was authorized by the government to sell them (during that time game cards were banned because they were tied to gambling) and was an incredible success. The business kept growing and he even opened a store in Osaka. He eventually started to develop different card games.

Sekiryo Kaneda

In 1929 he gave his son-in-law, Sekiryo Kaneda, the company. By this point, this was Japan's largest card shop. He renamed it to "Yamauchi Nintendo and Co." Kaneda was able to make the company even bigger and included western card games. He made the company more efficient by introducing an assembly line, creating competence and he advanced the playing card business.

Sadly he suffered a stroke in 1948 that forced his retirement by the next year. By then he gave his grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, the company. Hiroshi was the one that introduced the videogames (at least a very rudimentary version of them).