Minoru Arakawa is a Japanese businessman best known as the founder and former president of Nintendo of America, and the co-founder of Tetris Online, Inc.
Biography
Minoru Arakawa was born on 3 September 1946 in Kyoto, Japan, the second son of Waichiro Arakawa and Michi Ishihara. Waichiro was the manager of Arakawa Textiles, and was more concerned with maintaining positive relationships with suppliers and customers than growing the company. Michi was an artist, who spent afternoons in the family garden or her studio; her paintings were hung at their family home. Arakawa's family was wealthy; the total real estate of Arakawa's family combined was about one-fifth of the downtown district in Kyoto. Arakawa began studying at Kyoto University in 1964, taking general classes for the first two years before focusing on civil engineering. He graduated with a master's degree in 1969, before moving to Boston in 1971 to continue studying civil engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He witnessed several protests against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War, but did not participate. Arakawa graduated MIT with a second master's degree in 1972. Following a conversation on campus with a group of young Japanese businessmen, he decided to try to find work with a trading company. Upon returning to Japan, he was hired by Marubeni, a company in Tokyo that developed hotels and office buildings. At a Christmas party in Kyoto, Arakawa met Yoko Yamauchi, daughter of Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi. They married in November 1973. Arakawa, along with his wife and three-year-old daughter Maki, moved to Vancouver, Canada in 1977 for work. A second daughter, Masayo was born in 1978. Hiroshi Yamauchi offered Arakawa to establish Nintendo of America; while Yoko opposed the position, having seen the impact of the company on her father's life, Arakawa accepted the offer. Arakawa and his wife established an office in Manhattan in 1980, and Arakawa became the company's first president. After a disastrous experience with the Radar Scopearcade game Arakawa was in charge of importing to the US, he rebounded by converting the poorly received Radar Scope to the phenomenally successful Donkey Kong, which has had many sequels. As this was the first game to feature Mario, Arakawa is credited with naming the character, a name which stems from his, at the time, Italian landlord Mario Segale. Starting in 1985, he and Howard Lincoln were instrumental in rebuilding the North American video game industry with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Arakawa also hired Howard Phillips, who would be invaluable to the creation of Nintendo Power magazine. Arakawa resigned as NOA president and was succeeded by Tatsumi Kimishima, former chief financial officer of Nintendo's Pokémon subsidiary, in January 2002. Arakawa won a lifetime achievement award in February 2007 at the Interactive Achievement Awards. In January 2006, Arakawa co-founded Tetris Online, Inc. with Henk Rogers and Tetris creator Alexey Pajitnov, which developed various games for Nintendo DS, Wii, iOS, and Facebook. Arakawa served as the president of Tetris Online, Inc. until March 2013. He is also an advisor to Avatar Reality.
