Honda Myth The Genius And His Wake

FOREWORD By Paul Ingrassia The names of the big Japanese consumer-products companies--Sony, Toshiba, Toyota and the like--are well known to virtually all Americans. But the men who built these world-class companies, and the stories behind how they did it, remain largely obscure in the world's largest consumer nation. Now Masaaki Sato, Japan's foremost automotive journalist, lifts the obscurity from the men who founded Honda Motor Co. during Japan's lean years in the wake of World War II. There is, of course, Soichiro Honda, the engineering genius who gave the company his name. But equally as important, Mr. Sato brings to life Takeo Fujisawa, the financial and management genius without whose skills Mr. Honda would have been just another garage-shop tinkerer. The two men were total opposites, yin and yang, and the polarity of their temperaments as well as their skills parallels those of the first Henry Ford and his top financial man, James Couzens. But there is a big difference between these two automotive odd couples. Messrs. Ford and Couzens had a falling out after Ford Motor rose to success, a phenomenon that happened more than once with those who were close to Henry Ford. In sharp contrast, when Mr. Honda was inducted into Detroit's Automotive Hall of Fame in October 1990, he flew back to Tokyo and placed his medal on the memorial tablet that commemorated Mr. Fujisawa, who had died two years earlier. "Takeo Fujisawa was the stalk that supported the gay flower Soichiro," Mr. Sato writes. "The stalk withered first, in the winter... The petals scattered in the summer." Mr. Honda was a genius engineer and a born extrovert. He loved to party and he craved the spotlight. The reserved Mr. Fujisawa was a loner who often worked at home and rarely, if ever, drove a car, preferring instead to be chauffeured around. They met each other through a Japanese bureaucrat who knew Soichiro Honda needed money and also knew that Mr. Fujisawa could figure out how to raise it. What Honda's co-founders had in common, as Mr. Sato tells it, were their explosive tempers--which earned Mr. Honda the nickname "Thunderer" among employees, who also labeled Mr. Fujisawa "Godzilla." But the two men also had an uncanny ability to command loyalty and to inspire their employees. Honda Giken Kogyo, or Honda Motor Company, officially was incorporated as a motorcycle maker on Sept. 24, 1948 in Japan's bleak, early post-war years. It was a year later that Messrs. Honda and Fujisawa met and formed their partnership, with the former handling engineering and manufacturing, and the latter handling financial affairs. Soichiro Honda was 42 years old, and Mr. Fujisawa was 38. Expansion was frenetic in the early years. A young recruit named Satoshi Okubo got rude treatment during his job interview, which prompted him to ask the interviewer: "When did you begin working for Honda, sir." The reply: "Yesterday." Mr. Okubo later became chairman of the company. By 1954, when the company went public, Honda was the dominant motorcycle manufacturer in Japan. But the company's sales soon plunged, partly due to quality problems. Mr. Honda responded by setting plans to enter the world's most prestigious and demanding motorcycle race: England's Isle of Man TT. The goal rallied employees to improve quality, even though it took five years before Honda actually entered the race. The company's motorcycles placed sixth, but just two years after that Honda shocked the motorcycle world by sweeping the top five positions. Thus began a pattern: racing would inspire product advancements and generate publicity, both of which propelled Honda's increasing sales success. All this inspired Mr. Fujisawa, despite his financial beSato, Masaaki is the author of 'Honda Myth The Genius And His Wake', published 2006 under ISBN 9781932234268 and ISBN 1932234268.