Nintendo was founded on September 23, 1889.
The Ottoman Empire wouldn't fall for another 33 years.
When Fusajiro Yamauchi opened a small shop in Kyoto, Japan to sell hand-painted playing cards, Queen Victoria still sat on the British throne. The Eiffel Tower had just been completed that same year. Jack the Ripper's crimes were barely a year old. The automobile was brand new. And the Ottoman Empire — which had ruled parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa for over 600 years — was still very much alive.
Nintendo's first product wasn't a console. It was a flower card.
Yamauchi made hanafuda — traditional Japanese playing cards with flower designs, hand-painted on mulberry wood pulp. Western playing cards had been banned in Japan for centuries due to their association with gambling, but hanafuda were tolerated. Yamauchi's cards became popular in yakuza-run gaming parlours across Kyoto. Other card makers fled the market, not wanting the criminal association. Yamauchi stayed.
The timeline from cards to Mario:
- 1889 — Founded. Sells hand-painted playing cards
- 1902 — Starts making Western-style playing cards
- 1922 — Ottoman Empire falls. Nintendo has been in business for 33 years
- 1947 — Opens a distribution company
- 1959 — Signs a deal with Disney to put characters on playing cards
- 1963 — Changes name to Nintendo Co., Ltd. and starts making toys
- 1975 — First electronic video game. 86 years after founding
- 1981 — Donkey Kong arrives in arcades
- 1985 — Super Mario Bros. launches. Nintendo becomes a global brand
- 2017 — Nintendo Switch launches. Still headquartered in Kyoto
The company survived the fall of the samurai class, two world wars (Kyoto was nearly nuked — it was the US military's top target before the Secretary of War removed it from the list), Japan's post-war economic collapse, and the transition from physical cards to digital entertainment.
Nintendo is now 136 years old. It has outlasted empires, survived wars, and reinvented itself from a playing card shop into one of the most beloved entertainment companies on the planet.
The name "Nintendo" is commonly believed to mean "leave luck to heaven." Nobody — not even Yamauchi's descendants — actually knows for certain what it means.