Fusajiro Yamauchi

Nintendo officially gives 1889 as the year Fusajiro Yamauchi began manufacturing hanafuda. However, historical research based on hundreds of documents and directories, including those preserved at Japan's National Diet Library, found that known contemporary entries repeatedly dated the establishment to 1892, while 1889 apparently did not appear in the commercial documents examined until several decades later.

Legal status — source text

No legal proceedings

Fusajiro Yamauchi's early Nintendo manufactured and sold hanafuda cards at a time when those cards, once again legal as gaming products, were also widely used in gambling establishments. Historical accounts of Nintendo's origins emphasise that gambling houses associated with the bakuto—predecessors of yakuza groups—often opened a fresh deck for every game, generating considerable demand from which Nintendo benefited.

State of the evidence

Historical commercial relationship with gambling demand documented; no proof Yamauchi operated illegal gambling

Attribution

Direct business activity; customers' or third parties' illegal gambling not attributed to Yamauchi