As of 2008, Yamauchi is the richest man in Japan and 149th richest person in the world, having a net worth of approximately $7.8 billion.ref: money

Early years

Hiroshi Yamauchi was born on November 7, 1927 to Shikanojo Inaba and Kimi Yamauchi. Kimi Yamauchi is the granddaughter of Shikanojo Inaba who agreed to adopt the family name and was expected to take over the Yamauchi family business. In 1933 he mysteriously abandoned his family as a result Kimi moved in with her sister. Hiroshi was left in the care of her parents Sekiryo and Tei Yamauchi. ref: 4

Hiroshi was sent to a preparatory school in Kyoto at age twelve and had planned to study law or engineering but World War II disrupted his studies. Since he was too young to fight he was put to work in a military factory. Once the war ended in 1945 Hiroshi went to Waseda University to study law. He married Michiko Inaba. With the absence of Yamauchi's father, his grandparents met to arrange the marriage. ref: 4

Start of his career with Nintendo

Yamauchi led Nintendo in a "notoriously imperialistic style."ref: Kent Hiroshi's grandfather had a stroke in 1949. Since he was the president of Nintendo and had no other immediate successor, he asked Hiroshi to immediately come to Nintendo to assume the position of president. He had to leave Waseda University in order to assume the position. Hiroshi would only accept the position if he were the only family member working at Nintendo. Reluctantly Hiroshi's grandfather agreed and died shortly after. Under the agreed upon terms, his older cousin had to be fired. Due to his young age and total lack of any management experience, most employees did not take Hiroshi seriously and many 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 named changed to Nintendo Karuta and established new headquarters in Kyoto. He was the sole judge of potential new products, and only a product that appealed to him and his usually extremely accurate instincts went on the market. ref: 1 ref: 4 ref: 7

He was the first to introduce the plastic Western playing card into the Japanese market. Western playing cards were still a novelty in Japan and the public associated them with Western-styled gambling games such as poker and bridge. Most gambling activities were technically illegal by default with only a few legally sanctioned exceptions (horse racing, pachinko, lottery). Therefore, the market for anything which was associated with gambling, including Hanafuda, was limited. Yamauchi's first "hit" came when he made a licensing agreement with Walt Disney in 1959 for his plastic playing cards. Nintendo targeted its playing cards as a tool for party games that the whole family could enjoy, a foreshadowing of the company's approach going into the 21st Century. Disney's tie-in was made towards that end. Nintendo's Disney playing card was also accompanied by a small, thin booklet with many tutorials for different card games. The strategy succeeded and the product sold 600,000 units in one year, soon gracing Nintendo with the domination of Japanese playing card market. With this success, Hiroshi once again changed the company name to Nintendo Company Limited and took the company public (listed on stock market) and became the chairman. ref: 1 ref: 7 He then decided to travel to the U.S. to visit the United States Playing Card Company, the world's biggest manufacturer of playing cards. Upon arriving in Cincinnati, Yamauchi was disappointed to see a small-scale office and factory. This led to the realization that card manufacturing was an extremely limited venture.