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Intermediate Japanese - Free Online Course
HONDA
本田
Honda Motor Company
Honda Motor Company is Japan’s third largest automaker, best known as the manufacturer of the popular Civic and Accord models. Honda also manufactures a complete line of motorcycles, lawnmowers, marine motors, and other motorized products.
Repair Shop Origins
Honda began with the entrepreneurial ambitions of Soichiro Honda (1906-1991). The son of a blacksmith, Honda shunned formal education in favor of hands-on training. As a teenager he worked in a repair shop, and founded his own business—another repair shop—at the age of twenty-two. He eventually transformed his fledgling enterprise into a piston manufacturing operation.
Honda was always an anti-establishment man, especially for a Japanese. Like most Japanese companies, Honda was forced to manufacture for the military government during World War II. In later years he stated that the experience of government contracts manufacturing taught him about the inefficiencies of central planning—even within the context of a capitalist economy. Throughout his life, Honda expressed disdain for the zaibatsu 財閥 (financial cliques) and gakubatsu 学閥 (academic cliques) that have long dominated Japanese industrial circles.
Honda in the Postwar Years
After the war, Honda Motor Company suffered from the same shortages of capital and raw materials that plagued the entire Japanese economy. The company’s founder was known for resorting to any means necessary in order to acquire funding. After pawning his wife’s jewelry and many of his personal possessions, Honda sent letters to thousands of potential lenders asking for loans to revitalize his business. These extreme methods enabled the company to survive the postwar crisis.
The postwar incarnation of Honda Motor Company gained momentum when Honda got the idea of attaching a small motor to a bicycle. The idea made sense in Japan, where there were still severe fuel shortages. After some tinkering, he developed a mass production model of the motorized bike—the 146cc “Dream.” The bikes sold well in Japan, and also found vast export markets in Europe and America. Honda became the largest motorcycle manufacturer in Japan by the mid-1960s, shortly after the company’s chief rival, Tohatsu, went bankrupt in 1964.
The Transition to Automobile Manufacturing
The Japanese government actively discouraged Honda from building automobiles. The country already had two major automakers—Nissan and Toyota—and government planners wanted resources for car manufacturing allocated to these two giants. Soichiro Honda persisted, though. Honda Motor Company’s first model, the Civic, rolled off the assembly lines in 1972. The ultra-fuel-efficient vehicle arrived just in time for the world oil crisis of 1973.
It has been more than twenty years since Soichiro Honda was last involved in the daily operations of the company that bears his name. (He retired in 1979.) Nevertheless, his legacy continues, and Honda’s corporate culture is distinctive among Japanese automakers. A graduate of one of Japan’s top universities would likely prefer a job at Toyota, which is regarded as the elitist haven of the automotive world. Honda Motor Company, by contrast, retains its reputation as a hands-on, “working man’s” company.