Nintendo, former stalwarts of the Japanese underworld

We all know that Nintendo, family-friendly videogame industry titan, started out making playing cards. Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft looks into the details and finds a company that once served gangsters and casinos, even operating its own 'love hotel.'

Hanafuda is a traditional Japanese card game that is often played during the New Year's holidays, at least today. In the 1880s, it was played by gangsters, and its popularity spread due in large part to gambling.
The Japanese word "yakuza" originally meant "useless individuals" and is derived from a losing hand played with hanafuda. Just as Nintendo's lore is inseparable with hanafuda, so is hanafuda impossible to disentangle from the history of Japanese organized crime.

A fantastic read. The Nintendo they've tried to forget [Kotaku]

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Anonymous

That was a great article. And Bashcraft is, by far, my favorite writer on Kotaku. I check the site regularly. Unfortunatley, because of their new, idiotic layout, and a tendency to simply headline articles without image or intro, I completely missed it on their actual site.

Obviously there are major issues in site design and userflow when you learn of an article from an outside source, even though you visit the original source site at least twice a day.

Maybe it’s just me though. If there’s just a headline it’s a trigger in my mind that flags it as “not important”. Like if it’s not important enough to display an intro paragraph before the jump than it must not be a good article and I won’t even read the headline itself.

I had the same issue when BoingBoing did their major overhaul and at the bottom of the first page just had headlines. I never got around to reading those articles. Was very happy that things changed back… or rather a combination of old and new. I only hope the Gawker crew can also learn this lesson.

As I said though… just my opinion/way of reading the intertubes.
PaulR

Maybe it’s just me, but that could almost be Audrey Hepburn…
Amira

Just a note; Love hotels aren’t a place where hookers take johns or anything like that. In Japan, privacy is sometimes difficult and people check into love hotels to fool around, especially if they still live at home with their parents. Most of these hotels have theme rooms and heart shaped bathtubs etc. They can be rented for a couple of hours or overnight. People sometimes just check in to use the room as a regular hotel room because the rates are pretty reasonable.
classic01

Oh, please this image IS safe for work. The quality is almost cartoonish and the private parts are nothing more than a circle of 25 pixels of diameter with a brown dot in the ceter.

I bet the NSFW people don’t like museums and churches either.
Zoman

I too was shocked and disgusted by this indecent display of flesh. That nipple was 22 pixels of wrongness. I have a small child that could have been scarred by such perversity.

Seriously though…
1. Why would you be looking at BoingBoing at work? People like you cost the economy billions in lost production.
2. If you work for a company that would find that image offensive… leave. Flee in fact. Because that company is run by people who only appear to be human.
- Jake0748
  
  Yay! I was going to say the same thing. My job keeps me hopping the whole time I’m there (no its not McDonalds, but pretty close). I think if I was at work and had time to screw around on the internet or my smart phone, I’d just punch out, go home and do it at my leisure.
  
  Personally, I’m tired of you NSFW people. :P
- Anonymous
  
  BoingBoing definitely doesn’t have to cater to people who are in jobs they don’t like, with a little time to enjoy themselves but standards imposed on how they can do it. But saying “why ask for a four-letter fix when as we know, anyone can simply quit and find a new job”? Really?
  - peterbruells
    
    Actually the alternative would be not to read boingboing at work.
    
    And it’s not a four letter fix. The quoted image is quite SFW in many Western countries and would be quite inappropriate in many others even if the woman wore more clothes.
The Bus

I browsed during my Monday lunch break and was surprised to see the image. Nothing that some scrolling didn’t fix.

A friend of mine was kind enough to get some Hanafuda cards made by Nintendo the last time he was in Japan.
Anonymous

For some reason, if your IP resolves to somewhere in australia, the link will just show you the australian Kotaku, article nowhere in sight. Boo-urns!
scaramanga

Classic Gawker.

I’ve posted this on Kotaku, but I’ll post this again here:

Nintendo is historically what is called a “karta” company in Japan. They make cards, not just hanafuda, but they made everything from board games to more classic ‘karta’ puzzles, to western playing cards.

The connection to gambling is equivalent of connecting American Playing Card Company (Bicycle, etc) to Bugsy Siegel and the mob because their cards are used in gambling.

The “Love Hotel” stuff is just internet rumor that always pops up on Japanese forums like 2ch, it always leads back to the same Geocities site:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown/4007/phy03.html

In fact the entire article is taken verbatim from the same Geocities website:
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown/4007/note_04.html

Which is a site that starts off as “Nintendo must be destroyed” (ä»»å¤©å ‚ã¯ä»Šä¸€åº¦æ»…ã³ãã°ãªã‚‰ãªã„ã€‚).

Its clearly a site that is designed to spread anti-Nintendo rumors. And the fact it keeps refering to Yamauchi (the now retired CEO) its a damn old one.

I’m just suprisied that these urban legends gets regurgitated on Kotaku all these years later.
gwailo_joe

If that gal aint a dead ringer for Miz. A. Hepburn. I’ll eat my fundoshi.

And love hotels are cool. . .well, there’s love hotels and then there’s ~*LOVE Hotels!!*~ if you catch my drift.

I lost my virginity in a love hotel; in Shinjuku Tokyo. . .1992 I believe it was. . .but besides the mini-fridge and the mirrored walls (nice touch), the room had little to recommend it. I remember a lady that took the money through a tiny slot/counter that had just enough room to pass bills through, and a very embarrassed young couple in the elevator.

So. . .not that interesting.

But two years ago I was in a town called Asahikawa, somewhere between Sapporo and Daisetzuzan National Park. That city had a lively red light strip with excellent ramen, and at the end of the busy street, right on the border of the sleepy part of town, a love hotel.

Big (6 stories at least), kind of going to seed but obviously built by someone trying to make an impression. Underground parking. The lobby had a big board with lit up photos of available rooms. Not lit=not available. Put your bills in the slot and a key drops! I said to my steady, let’s splurge! She replied, whatever. And for about 12000 yen (about $100 at the time=cheap!) we got the Beatles theme room.

Top floor. Full size pool table. Framed covers of Mersey Beat magazines on the walls with the Fab Four looking all young and chipper.

A bar. An excellent karaoke machine. Wooden sauna (which was awesome). And vibrating bed (which was stupid).

Playing pool in bathrobes after a nice sauna, with some singin’ and lovin’ thrown in. . .it was a great time.

A little off topic there, sorry. . .but don’t knock the love hotel! Another civilized advancement by our friends, the Japanese ^^
papiermeister

NSFW??? It is Sunday, FFS! Besides, the image is classic art-nude and SO WHAT?! If my boss caught (?) me with this image at work, SHE would have me zoom in! Enlarge! Engage, Number One! Make it so! And we would all agree that this is one lovely woman! Oh, and wonder who is on the Ace of Spades o_0
- regeya
  
  “NSFW??? It is Sunday, FFS!”
  
  The “It’s Sunday” defense is a non sequitur in this day and age. Besides, it was already Monday in some parts of the world when this was posted. The whole of the Internet does not exist in a mere four time zones.
  
  “Besides, the image is classic art-nude and SO WHAT?! If my boss caught (?) me with this image at work, SHE would have me zoom in!”
  
  Not all of us have such enlightened employers.
  
  Although I’m in a fairly generous office and am allowed to surf when it doesn’t affect my job, I’ve had to stop surfing BoingBoing at work for this very reason.
  - peterbruells
    
    And what standards would Boing Boing use?
    
    The image above wouldn’t raise eyebrows at a supermarket. And in other countries, people would be offended if she wore a bikini instead of a one-piece.
- Michael Smith
  
  It is Sunday, FFSM
  
  Its Monday where I live, not that I browse bb from work.
- Allesklar
  
  The Ace of Spades woman probably doesn’t have the gloves on! Oh, you dirty, non-dishwashing gloves girl!
Anonymous

Hanafuda cards don’t have numbers. They are, rather, pictures of plants and animals. The 8-9-1 (ya-ku-za)combination comes from some other card game.
Anonymous

Whoops — it’s 8-9-3 not 8-9-1. That’s what I get for trying to be a know-it-all.
Toxa

NSFW is not the only problem of this hardcore pornographic picture!!!!!!!
Much worse, think of THE CHILDRENZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mark Dow

I count 23 pixels.
oddboyout

No. It’s an interesting topic but Kotaku’s sexist, homophobic and transphobic (Ashcraft in particular pops into mind) articles have pissed me off one too many times. I will not click that link and I urge other readers not to either.
- Anonymous
  
  @oddboyout Transphobic? Like what? – Joel (who works for Kotaku, but is legitimately curious)
Anonymous

I know this is the weekend but really, my RSS feed displays images! I don’t normally consider BoingBoing NSFW.

This doesn’t mean that I didn’t like the post, only that the provided card image might not be appropriate to view in all settings.
l’elk!

where can i buy the full set of that vintage nudie playing card(or a similar japanese set)? if the rest of the images are as classy as that one, i have to have it.
surefire

It’d be a good idea to put some sort of NSFW filter on that image.
jmtd

Argh! Frakking Kotaku and their hashbang URLs. Click-through didn’t bring up the article, just their front page; refresh didn’t either. Edit the ‘#!’ out of the address and it magically started working.

Surely I am not alone? Surely there is an analyst meeting somewhere, reconsidering the crazy idea.
Anonymous

I love the undies + dishwashing glove combo.
- Anonymous
  
  >> dishwashing glove
  
  Actually, you can tell by the color and fringe around the top that those are authentic turn-of-the-century Japanese fisting gloves.
  - Allesklar
    
    Haha…wow. “Authentic turn-of-the-century Japanese fisting gloves.” Keep those hands clean for sure!