Yes, Nintendo Was Created In 1889, And Here’s What They Made
Gaming is for the young, right? Maybe not. Before the mustachioed, Italian plumber or creating your Mii, Nintendo was a Meiji-era startup working its way onto the global stage. But what did they make before the Wii, or the NES, or even the Color TV-Game system?
Hanafuda playing cards. Hanafuda means flower cards, and they lived up to their name. Back in 1889, Nintendo’s founder Yamauchi Fusajirō would hand-paint the flowers and symbols on each card, originally made from mulberry bark. Decks came with 48 cards, 12 suits with four cards each.
Hanafuda is used for a variety of games, a few are detailed here, and Nintendo still makes them. In fact, the company hosts the annual Nintendo Cup game tournament. But a lot has changed over the course of 128 years.
The cards themselves have changed radically — originals had no numbers and very different suits — but the biggest difference is that the cards are no longer associated with organized crime. According to Wired, Fusajiro started his company out of a small shop, but his product’s popularity soared. He expanded past his home in Kyoto into Osaka, and his Hanafuda soon became a favorite of the Yakuza — the Japanese mafia.
The Yakuza gambling dens started using the flower cards, with high-rolling professionals using a new, hand-made deck for every game. Fusajiro had to train apprentices to mass-produce to keep up. The government caught on, and tried banning playing cards from the general public, but it wasn’t the crime bosses or the government that forced Nintendo to eventually pivot. And then pivot again, and again, and again.
Nintendo brought plenty of innovations to its industry, including plastic-coated western-style cards and a far-reaching distribution system, but decades after Fusajiro’s death the third president of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi, came to America and saw the limitations of playing cards.
He decided that his company needed a new direction, and he started a period of searching that lasted for over a decade. Nintendo’s new ventures included instant rice, a taxi service, and even a “love hotel” that rented out its rooms an hour at a time and is exactly what you think it is. All of these business adventures failed, and the cards stayed as the only viable, long-lasting product.
It was only when Nintendo figured out to use the its card distribution network to sell toys, especially electronic toys, did the company come out of the woods and, for a time, become the third largest Japanese company.
So, what does Nintendo’s long history of card making mean for fans of the company and its big titles? Well, a centuries old company founded in 1889 acts a bit different from up-and-comers like Sony (71 years old) or Microsoft (42 years old). As the Atlantic explained, “Nintendo weathered the changes in games largely by ignoring them.” It has the ability to lose a console war or two and come out with a break-through product like the Wii or Switch.
But it also means that there’s a great gift out there for Nintendo fans, one that doesn’t cost $300. Classic Nintendo Hanafuda cards are for sale here. And an explanation of one of the most popular games, Koi Koi, is here.
