Sekiryo Kaneda (金田 積良), also known as Sekiryo Yamauchi (山内 積良), 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. Kaneda retired in 1949 after suffering a stroke, leaving Nintendo to be run by his grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi.
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. Fusajiro Yamauchi died or retired in 1929, making Kaneda Nintendo's second president.
When Kaneda took over Nintendo, he was in charge of Japan's largest card maker. One of his first decisions was to create a "karuta" division in charge of all educative and child-focused card games.
In 1933, he established Nintendo as a joint venture company called Yamauchi Nintendo. 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. 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.
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.[1]