Current Events > Man, even when Hiroshi Yamauchi first took over Nintendo, he was an asshole.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yamauchi

In 1949, Yamauchi's grandfather and president of Nintendo, Sekiryo Kaneda, suffered a stroke. As he had no other immediate successor, he asked Yamauchi to come immediately to Nintendo to assume the job of president. [Yamauchi] had to leave his law degree at Waseda University to do so. Yamauchi would only accept the position if he were the only family member working at Nintendo. Reluctantly, Yamauchi's grandfather agreed, and died shortly thereafter. Under the agreement, his older cousin had to be fired. Due to his young age and total lack of management experience, most employees did not take Yamauchi seriously and resented him. Soon after taking over, he had to deal with a strike by factory employees who expected him to cave in easily. Instead, he asserted his authority by firing many long-time employees who questioned his authority. He had the company name changed to Nintendo Karuta and established its new headquarters in Kyoto. Yamauchi led Nintendo in a "notoriously imperialistic style". He was the sole judge of potential new products, and only a product that appealed to him and his instincts went on the market.

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, but I was somewhat under the impression that his abrasive mentality was something he had cultivated after years of running the company.

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How dare he refuse being bullied by the people who work for him

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Solar_Crimson posted...

Yamauchi would only accept the position if he were the only family member working at Nintendo. Reluctantly, Yamauchi's grandfather agreed, and died shortly thereafter.

I like how the wording makes it sound like he died so he wouldn't be another family member working there.

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Yamauchi also refused to accept his retirement pension, which was reported to be around $9 to $14 million, believing that Nintendo could put it to better use.

This is pretty nice though

He seems like a total prick in all his pictures.

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Nintendo wouldn't exist the way it does without all the stars aligning. Like all the people like Yamauchi, Iwata, Miyamoto, and even guys like Reggie or Howard Lincoln who's solely responsible for Nintendo long string of legal wins and wrestles. All the good and the bad ultimately matured to be their unique existence. I'm personally appreciative of all the people there, but yeah it sucks if anybody had to suffer along the way

Video game industry in general is run like shit though with a lot of abused workers so it's not even really a thing limited to Yamauchi. Japan in general had a gungho working environment

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