In the 1960s Nintendo ran taxis and sold instant rice, then pulled out by 1969. Neither appears in its official history

That’s exactly how the official timeline reads.

Nintendo’s official website carries a corporate history that begins in 1889.

It started making hanafuda cards in Kyoto, made Japan’s first Western playing cards, made plastic playing cards, sold Disney playing cards, listed its shares, changed its name, and in 1977 released a home TV game console.

No taxis appear in this timeline. No instant food either.

According to a third-party compilation citing securities reports and Nikkei Business, in the 1960s Nintendo ran a taxi company and sold instant rice in partnership with Omi Kenshi.

By 1969 it had withdrawn completely from the businesses it had started outside its core.

Uniqlo’s official timeline added the closure of its first store in brackets. Nintendo’s official history leaves out the nearly ten years it spent failing outside its core.

This column assembles that unwritten part from sources and sets it beside the written timeline.

Listed companies fall outside the criteria for case articles, so it’s handled as a column rather than a case.

The official history, and the lines it leaves out

Read the second column from the right down, and the official history’s 1960s are nearly empty.

A Tokyo branch in 1961, the listing in 1962, the name change in 1963, automated card-backing in 1968.

Only events inside the core business are written.

It began with a trip that showed the ceiling

According to the compilation, the trigger was a 1956 study trip to the United States.

Seeing America’s largest playing card maker, Hiroshi Yamauchi became aware that his core market had a ceiling.

An article by Toshiaki Kanda on Business+IT says the same. After visiting the major American maker, Yamauchi concluded playing cards alone would keep the business small and set out to diversify.

A foothold outside the core existed even before the trip.

The compilation says Yamauchi had run the taxi company Daiya Kotsu since 1955.

After the trip, the moves spread into food.

1. 1955: taxis

   Hiroshi Yamauchi runs the taxi company Daiya Kotsu.

2. 1956: the US trip

   Seeing America's largest playing card maker, he becomes aware his core market has a ceiling.

3. June 1961: food

   Nintendo sets up Sanoh Foods jointly with Omi Kenshi and sells instant rice, dried rice eaten by pouring hot water over it, along with character-branded furikake.

What stands out is how far it went.

A hanafuda and playing card company went into taxis and food.

Neither connected to its paper and printing skills or to the shelves where games were sold.

1964: both outside and inside stalled

According to Kanda’s article, this diversification failed across the board, largely for lack of know-how. Nintendo faced near-bankruptcy in 1964.

The compilation says that in the same year demand for playing cards had run its course and sales plateaued.

The year the businesses outside the core failed was also the year the core stopped growing.

The following year, 1965, Yamauchi put on sale as the “Ultra Hand” a toy hand that employee Gunpei Yokoi had built as a hobby.

Kanda’s article says it became a hit and saved the company from bankruptcy. Neither source gives sales figures.

In 1966, according to the compilation, Nintendo decided to become a comprehensive indoor games company.

The idea was to stop expanding outward and expand within play instead.

Then in 1969 it withdrew completely from its diversified businesses, including taxis and food.

The official history records the change from Nintendo Karuta to Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Dropping “karuta,” the word for cards, from the company name happened in the midst of diversification.

Was the aim to move beyond the core? Or did the shortened name simply come to cover play in general? No source we read says.

Official timelines don’t write down what happened outside the core

What we can state plainly concerns how the official history is written.

Nintendo’s history records what happened inside its core business and leaves out what happened outside it.

Read alone, it makes hanafuda to video games look like one straight road.

In reality, partway along that road lie the ten-odd years it took to go out into taxis and food and come back.

It decided in 1966 to return to play, pulled out from outside in 1969, and released a home TV game console in 1977.

Video games were the next core business that a company, having failed outside, found within play.

Set beside Uniqlo’s timeline, which kept its closed stores in brackets, the two timelines treat failure in opposite ways.

An official history’s lines are chosen by how a company wants to present its past.

The missing lines can’t be seen without going to other sources.

What could not be confirmed

The list setting Nintendo beside other legendary companies is in this column.

A blank in the timeline is not a time when nothing happened

Nintendo’s official history begins with hanafuda in 1889 and reaches the Family Computer in 1983.

Its 1960s lines are few, and on their own they look like a quiet decade.

Check the sources and that decade was anything but quiet. It was the time the company went furthest from its core and came closest to bankruptcy.

A blank in a timeline isn’t a time when nothing happened.

It’s a time that didn’t make it into the timeline.

The beginning of a video game company lies not in the hanafuda timeline but in that blank.