Talk:Konami

Takara

Konami also sold toys like the DigiQ MicroIR series of radio-controlled cars, tanks and trains, they purchased a 22.3% stake in toy company Takara for $27.4 million on June 1, 2000. However, I am not sure if this site is ideal for citing reference to the Konami-branded DigiQ MicroIR series by Takara. RVandres (talk) 23:02, 19 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hongkiat.com source

This listicle detailing the history of various game companies was written on 12 March 2013, and it's this wiki article's sole source for the claim that the name "Konami" is a portmanteau of the founders' names. When discussing Konami, the listicle repeats the same information shown on an earlier March 2013 version of this Wikipedia article: alleging that Kozuki, Nakama, Miyasako were the three founders of Konami. Said information had already been on Wikipedia for years before the article was written, and it was an uncited claim (and if you look at that revision, you can see that the author was replacing another uncited theory with his own). I think it goes without saying this is clearly citogenesis.

There is an entire rabbithole to explore with the history of these Konami portmanteau claims on Wikipedia, not just the English project but also the Japanese and Chinese one, which both predate the claims detailed here. In short: in September 2005, the long-time arcade industry journalist Masumi Akagi published a history book named それは「ポン」から始まった アーケードTVゲームの成り立ち ("It started with 'Pong': the origin of the arcade video game"). I have never read this book myself, but I have found two secondary sources that claim to have read this book, and each source effectively corroborates the information provided by the other: one, a Japanese news blog post from July 2017, and another, a November 2019 history textbook by Alexander Smith. To clarify, both of these sources claim that Akagi's book says that Mr. Kozuki, Mr. Nakama (Smith calls him "Naka"), and Mr. Miyasako are the three original founders of Konami. Smith additionally makes the claim that "Konami" is a portmanteau of their names, and the only citation provided was Akagi's book.

I mentioned Japanese Wikipedia earlier because in December 2005, three months after Akagi's book released, an anonymous user added this claim to Japanese Wikipedia. In September 2006, another user added Miyasako's full name to the wiki. These are the earliest mentions online of this man. I have not been able to find anything (news articles, forum posts, books, magazine articles) that mention Miyasako prior to the inclusions on Wikipedia (and Akagi's book).

Given all this, I truly believe that Akagi's book makes this three-founder portmanteau claim. I will update the citations accordingly, but I am not opposed to removing this claim altogether. If anyone reads this and chooses to take further action, please discuss below. --LiquidSevens (talk) 23:27, 16 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  • Well done. I do have both the Smith book and the Akagi book, and can confirm that Smith did pull this from Akagi (presumably Naka versus Nakama is a typo since Akagi does have the correct name). The paragraph in question in Akagi on page 227 states:
コナミ工業は上月景正、仲真良信、宮迫龍雄の三人が、大阪 ・豊中で豊南電子工業を立ち上げ、六九年三月にそれぞれ の頭文字を取って、コナミ工業として正式に創業した上で、七三年三月に法人化したものである。四0年京都府生まれの 上月は関西大学経済学部を卒業して、日本コロムビアの大阪営業所に入り、ジュ ークボックスを扱っていた。同じ職場で、 レコード供給を担当していた宮迫とともに独立して、さらに宮迫の知人でレコード店にいた仲真が加わったのである。当 初はジュークボックスの修理販売とレコード供給だけだったが、ゲーミング機の製造に進出し、日本物産と同じような電 光点滅ルーレット式ゲーミング機を作っていた。
Machine translated, this reads as:
"Konami Kogyo was started when the three men Kagemasa Kozuki, Yoshinobu Nakama, and Tatsuo Miyasako launched Honan [or possibly Toyominami or Toyonami, any of those readings would be used to identify a location within Toyonaka] Denshi Kogyo in Toyonaka, Osaka, then in March 1969 formally founded it as Konami Kogyo by taking the initial characters of their names, and in March 1973 incorporated it. Kozuki, born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1940, graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Kansai University and entered the Osaka sales office of Nippon Columbia, where he handled jukeboxes. He became independent together with Miyasako, who in the same workplace was in charge of record supply, and Nakama, an acquaintance of Miyasako who had been at a record shop, then joined them. At first they only repaired and sold jukeboxes and supplied records, but they advanced into the manufacture of gaming machines and were making electric flashing roulette-style gaming machines similar to those of Nihon Bussan."
Akagi was the editor of Game Machine, one of the main Japanese coin-op trade magazines, so in general his book is a high-quality source for information on the Japanese coin-op industry. I think your instinct to just update the citations is the correct one. Indrian (talk) 16:27, 17 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. As for 豊中で豊南電子工業, I believe it's something like "Hounan Electronics Industries" (Hounan being a neighborhood within Toyonaka).
There is an interesting question to ask about how Nakama and Miyasako's names are pronounced; there are no known audio records of their names available online. Nakama is mentioned at least a dozen times in Game Machine, but Miyasako was obscure enough to never have been mentioned (as far as I can tell). Smith says Miyasako left the company after they decided to expand beyond the records industry — this could explain his absence in the press (Konami's first mention in Game Machine was in 1977).
Anyway, I have spoken to a few Japanese people who consider 仲真良信 to be an unusual name, possibly Okinawan, which they read in the on-yomi style: "Ryoshin", rather than "Yoshinobu". As for Miyasako, people who believe in the "Kozuki, Nakama, & Matsuda + Ishihara" theory have doubted his existence due to the lack of information about him. This is unrelated to the subject at hand, but I will mention that this theory seemingly debuted online from the website of a Chinese Konami fan in March 2002, and was posted on Chinese Wikipedia in November 2004; later it ended up on the Japanese web (including Wikipedia in April 2005), which presumably led to the claim being posted to English Wikipedia in June 2005.
All of this confusion isn't helped by a US magazine that named Matsuda as a company founder in 1984 (the photograph additionally shows Kozuki and Ishihara alongside him, conducting a traditional ceremony), a mid-80s document mentioning "four founders" (not a reliable source but none of this information is going into the wiki page anyway), and the company's pivot to only mentioning Kozuki when discussing the company's origins (this began after Nakama retired in May 1986, with Matsuda & Ishihara already being gone from press coverage long before this).
At least, the 15 June 1986 Game Machine article that I just linked in regards to Nakama's retirement identifies him as one of the founding members, on page 3:

コナミ工業㈱(本社大阪、上月景正社長)の専務取締役、その子会社コナミ㈱(本社東京、同) の代表取締役だった仲真良信氏が五月二十三日付で退任、退社した。コナミ工業によると、五月二十三日の定例株主 総会、取締役会を経て役員 異動を行ない、仲真取締 役ら三名が退任、新たに取締役と監査役各一名を選任した。この異動内容は次のとおり(カッコ内は旧職名)。取締役——山村敏雄氏(コナミ㈱・取締役)、監査役 井上更明氏(㈱近畿相互銀行参与)。▽退任仲真良信氏(取締役)、田中毅氏(同)、長谷川敏男氏(監査役)。うち仲真氏はコナミエ業の創業(昭和四十四年)、設立(四十八年)当初からのスタッフのひとり。コナミ工業で専務取締役 となり、コナミ㈱の代表 取締役にもなったが、昨年秋に実務上から退き、両社の取締役にとどまっ ていたもの。仲真氏、田 中氏ともに独立する、との説もある。
Mr. Yoshinobu Nakama, who was the executive director of Konami Industries, Ltd. (headquartered in Osaka, president: Kagemasa Kozuki) and representative director of its subsidiary Konami Corporation (headquartered in Tokyo, same), resigned and left the company as of May 23rd. According to Konami Industries, officers were changed after the regular general meeting of shareholders and board of directors held on May 23rd, with Director Nakama and three others retiring, and one new director and one new auditor were appointed. The details of this change are as follows (old job title is in parentheses). Directors: Mr. Toshio Yamamura (Director, Konami Corporation), Auditor: Mr. Saraaki Inoue (Advisor, Kinki Sogo Bank, Ltd.). ▽ Retired: Mr. Yoshinobu Nakama (Director), Mr. Tsuyoshi Tanaka (Same), and Mr. Toshio Hasegawa (Auditor). Mr. Nakama has been one of the staff members of Konami since its founding (Showa 44) and its founding (Showa 48). He became a managing director at Konami Industries and a representative director at Konami Corporation, but he retired from his duties last fall and remained on the board of directors of both companies. There is also a theory that both Mr. Nakama and Mr. Tanaka will become independent.

Even if Smith provides what is commonly believed to be Nakama and Miyasako's given names in his book, maybe this wiki article shouldn't contain them, since those transliterations were originally created by Wikipedians who were merely guessing. Information of such nebulous origin could potentially hinder future investigations. Of course, I think keeping their surnames is completely fine. --LiquidSevens (talk) 23:36, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
allikas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Konami