Nintendo: The Company and its Founders - Sharyland ISD

NINTENDO BRANCHES OUT
and came from an aristocratic Kyoto family who had
an established textile business called Arakawa Textiles,
Yamauchi did not like him. He felt that anyone from
an aristocratic family was arrogant. Yamauchi’s wife
had to convince him to give Mino permission to
marry Yoko, as was the custom of the time.
MINORU ARAKAWA
Little did Yamauchi know, his son-in-law had an
excellent background in business. Arakawa Textiles
had a fine reputation for putting quality first and
was well respected by other members of the business
community. When the Arakawa family patriarch,
Waichiro Arakawa, had retired some time earlier,
his eldest son had taken over the family business, in
accordance with Japanese tradition. Mino was the
second son, so he was free to choose his career. After
graduating from college in Kyoto, he headed to the
United States. For graduate school, he attended the
prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT), where he studied civil engineering. He toured
the country in a Volkswagen bus on his vacations. He
was fascinated with US culture and its emphasis on
the individual. It was unlike the conformity that was
generally expected of the Japanese. Mino eventually
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