Reading the news it seems that Nintendo of Japan handles the entire hardware department with little interference with the western part of the company. Is it true? 

I'd believe it. Back in the day Howard Lincoln had lots of influence in Nintendo of America. He worked hard and got sports licensing deals with N64. Its how we got Ken Griffey Baseball. I'd also have to believe that was why the NES got its name and it was called the Famicon in Japan. They were far more independent back in the day.

Nowadays  is much harder to do this kind of thing. With internet we would know of Japan and America got different consoles, even if they are the same with different names and games. At the time almost nobody knew NES in Japan was Famicom. 

Probably really limited

I'm sure NoA and NoE offer suggestions on the direction where Nintendo should head, but it's really up to Nintendo Japan to make all the decisions hardware wise

NoA is NoJ's bitch. NoE seems more independent than its American counterpart, which I'm salty over

RolStoppable said: StarOcean said: NoA is NoJ's bitch. NoE seems more independent than its American counterpart, which I'm salty over I don't view it that way at all. NoE is more of an extension of NCL than NoA is. If NCL says that Japanese games need to be released in Europe, NoE obeys. On the other hand, NoA has denied various games in recent years, either outright or in more limited fashion. It shouldn't be a surprise that NoA is more independent than NoE because that's how it always was. On topic: Since Nintendo's hardware and software departments work very closely together and because most of Nintendo's development force is located in Japan, NoA and NoE don't have much input on the design of the hardware. It's only logical that the people who make the games that will sell the hardware have the most say.

Well it used to be different. NoA used to make their own games. I mentioned the sports franchises. Plus even earlier than that, NoA made a franchise called Star Tropics that was pretty good. If memory serves, Iwata took all that power away from NoA and made Japan the absolute power behind Nintendo.

RolStoppable said: StarOcean said: NoA is NoJ's bitch. NoE seems more independent than its American counterpart, which I'm salty over I don't view it that way at all. NoE is more of an extension of NCL than NoA is. If NCL says that Japanese games need to be released in Europe, NoE obeys. On the other hand, NoA has denied various games in recent years, either outright or in more limited fashion. It shouldn't be a surprise that NoA is more independent than NoE because that's how it always was. On topic: Since Nintendo's hardware and software departments work very closely together and because most of Nintendo's development force is located in Japan, NoA and NoE don't have much input on the design of the hardware. It's only logical that the people who make the games that will sell the hardware have the most say.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Nintendo of Japan take away NoA's say a few years back? Like NoJ also has control over NoA? Something like that

It's rather simple:

NOJ               >> GOKU
NOA, NOE    >> Krillin

Now who's the star in DBZ?

NOA and NOE barely decide anything. NOJ runs the show and always have.

I think that had more to do with software rather than hardware, no? I don't think the NoA had any say in the creation of the NES-GameCube.