Sekiryo Kaneda

Sekiryo Kaneda (Japanese: 金田 積良, Hepburn: Kaneda Sekiryō; 1883 – 1949), also known as Sekiryo Yamauchi (山内 積良, Yamauchi Sekiryō), was the second president of what is now Nintendo Co., Ltd., from 1929 to 1949. He married one of the two daughters of Fusajiro Yamauchi, Tei Yamauchi, and took the Yamauchi surname.^[1][2] Kaneda retired in 1949 after suffering a stroke, leaving Nintendo to be run by his grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi.^[3]

Sekiryo Kaneda
金田 積良
2nd President of Nintendo
In office 1929–1949
Preceded by	Fusajiro Yamauchi
Succeeded by	Hiroshi Yamauchi
Personal details
Born	1883
Died	1949 (aged 65-66)
Spouse	Tei Yamauchi (m. 1905)
Children	Kimi (daughter) (b.1907), Taka (daughter) (b.1909)
Relatives	Hiroshi Yamauchi (grandson)
Occupation	Entrepreneur

Career

In 1905, Kaneda married Fusajiro Yamauchi's daughter, Tei, and based on Japanese adult adoption rules, he took the Yamauchi surname on the same day in order to inherit Nintendo.^[4] Fusajiro Yamauchi died^[5] or retired in 1929, making Kaneda Nintendo's second president.^[6]

When Kaneda took over Nintendo, he was in charge of Japan's largest card maker.^[6] One of his first decisions was to create a "karuta" division in charge of all educative and child-focused card games.^[5]

In 1933, he established Nintendo as a joint venture company called Yamauchi Nintendo.^[4][5] He additionally imposed new works methods and expanded Nintendo international market by selling cheap decks in India and by selling hanafuda decks to Japanese colonists throughout the Japanese colonial empire.^[5] Additionally, hanafuda decks are sold to Japanese migrants in the United States during this period. Indeed, hanafuda decks made by Nintendo have been found in the United States dating from 1930s.^[5]

The same year, Kaneda expanded Nintendo's headquarters by buying the nearby terrain and building a new building made of cement using his own company, Haikyô.^[7]

During World War II, Nintendo came close to bankruptcy but was saved thanks to a contract with the Japanese government on November 28th 1942 to realise a Uta-garuta deck which used nationalist texts instead of the habitual 100 poems. 15,000 decks were made by December 8th. Nintendo also sold board games with nationalist connotations during this period.^[8]

In 1947, he established a distribution company, Marufuku, that would sell new varieties of Western-style playing cards.^[4][2]

Personal life

From his 1905 marriage to Tei Yamauchi,^[5] Kaneda had two daughters: Kimi, born in 1907, whose husband would end up inheriting Nintendo, and Taka, born in 1909, who would end up inheriting Haikyô.^[9] Kimi would end up marrying Shikanojô Inaba, a marriage from which was born Hiroshi Yamauchi.^[9]

He suffered a stroke in 1948 and retired in 1949.^[10] Near death, he quickly recruited his 21-year-old grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, to quit college and inherit the family business. Hiroshi Yamauchi's father, Shikanojo Inaba, had forfeited inheritance because he had abandoned his family when Yamauchi was five years old.^[11][12][13] His ashes today reside within the same building he built in 1933.^[5][9]