Bit by Bit - How Nintendo is a Byproduct of the Great Commission

 (Bit by Bit is a series expressing gospel
truths through gaming metaphors. The title refers to our progressive sanctification. And, you know, 1's and 0's)

No doubt, you doubt my premise. How could the Great Commission have anything to do with what is arguably the classic of all classic video games?

Hear me out... it's a closer correlation than you're probably expecting.

In 1541, Francis Xavier (former classmate of Ignatius of Loyola) set sail from Portugal to Goa, India. He did so at the request of Henry III of Portugal, who wanted him to address the reportedly declining state of the Church among Portuguese in India. Goa was Portugal's massively important colonial trading center in India, and from there Xavier was to spread the gospel in the East Indies. (Basically India to Indonesia)

Before his departure, Xavier (with Ignatius and others) had been involved in founding the Jesuit order. He thus went out as the first Jesuit missionary. (Of the Jesuit missions movement much can be said, both good and bad, but it brought Christ to many, many people around the world, and is something of which more evangelicals should be aware)

I won't spend this whole entry recounting Xavier's fascinating story (parts of his wikipedia article are quite poorly written, so I'd recommend looking elsewhere), but it is worth noting that in many ways he was ahead of his time as a missionary, employing methods we might call incarnational while those that followed after him often took more of a colonialist approach.

Xavier ministered in a variety of places around Asia, but one important and well-known period of ministry near the end of his life was the 2+ years he spent working in Japan, beginning in 1549.

While Xavier was making efforts to reach Japan with the permission of its rulers, a course of action he felt would be more culturally appropriate there, the Portuguese crew of his ships also quite naturally interacted with the local Japanese people. Seemingly not feeling personally invested in Xavier's missionary purpose, they began teaching a new game to the local people who enjoyed gambling, using a deck of Portuguese playing cards they'd brought with them. This caught on, and variants of the game spread widely. Gambling card games based on this European style 48-card deck became very popular, and were banned in the 1600's as Japan entered its centuries of isolation, closing itself off to the outside world and trying to rid itself of foreign influences. People who enjoyed the card games found various ways around this ban, however, often by changing the look of the cards. Over the next century or two the decks involved into what became known as the Hanafuda, a numberless deck with flowers designating the different suits.

From the creation of the hanafuda deck, still with 48 cards organized similarly to the Portuguese deck, though now with very different art, we now fast forward to the Meiji Era, in which Japan sought to leave behind the old days and become a modern power. Many bittersweet stories are told of this time of loss and renewal, some historical (in 1876 the remnants of the samurai were banned from carrying swords; in 1877 the last samurai rebellion occurred, was eventually stamped out, and the era of the samurai was ended), and many imaginary tales, as it is a common setting for Japanese period fiction.

In these storied days, not long after Japan had moved its capital from its ancient seat in Kyoto to what is now Tokyo and just after telegraph lines had begun going up, a young entrepreneur named Fusajiro Yamauchi started a company selling high-quality hanafuda cards, which the government had finally decided were far enough removed from the original gambling cards to stop banning them.
Mr. Yamauchi opened his first hanafuda store in 1889, named "Nintendo Koppai."

Therefore it was that, 340 years after Portuguese playing cards were introduced (unintentionally) by Francis Xavier as he sought to establish a foothold for the church in Japan (and did see many Japanese accept Christ, though the history of the church in Japan has been a largely tragic one), the Nintendo company was founded to sell an updated Japanese version of those cards.

It was managed well and expanded rapidly, and after 1959, when Fusajiro's grandson Hiroshi acquired the rights to put Disney characters on Nintendo's playing cards, it became Japan's most successful playing card company. Following a trip to the US, however, feeling underwhelmed after his visit to the world's largest playing card manufacturer there, Hiroshi realized there was little future in remaining solely a playing card manufacturer. The company began experimenting with different product lines, finally settling on toys, then by the 70's, early electronic games. (Some of you will at this point be familiar with Nintendo's history, with the Game and Watch device coming onto the market in 1980.)

In 1983, Nintendo began selling the Family Computer (Famicom) entertainment system in Japan, then from 1985-1987 in the West as well, where it was known as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and came bundled with a game featuring everyone's favorite princess-saving Italian plumber. The Game Boy handheld system followed in 1989, bundled with a little Russian game that had recently begun gaining popularity in the US, called... "Tetris."

The rest, I think, you know. (Though you might not have known that Nintendo still sells hanafuda cards)

So, next time you play a Nintendo game, remember Francis Xavier, first Jesuit missionary to Japan.
Today, Japan's percentage of believers is less than 1%, and it remains one of the world's most secular countries. Early efforts to bring the gospel to Japan resulted, by the vagaries of history, in the export of Nintendo to the world. Maybe it's time for the world's Nintendo generation to take the gospel back there.

TL;DR: The founding of the church in Japan led to you having Nintendo games.
Next time you're playing a Nintendo game, pause it, and pray for the church in Japan.