“The Honda Myth: The Genius and His Wake” - Go Read It!

A few weekends back I was kicking tires and telling lies inside the paddock during the AMA races at Fontana when the topic of Honda Motor Corp’s rapid historical ascent to the top spot in worldwide manufacturing came up in conversation. Even though I’ve clearly been hooked by the uniquely articulated passion of the Italian motorcycle industry, I’m not naive enough to ignore the tremendous historical contributions and implications that the Japanese motorcycle industry, and the Honda Motor Corp. in specific, has offered to motorcycling in general. In relatively short order, a mere twenty to thirty years post World War II, Honda went from a bit player in Japan to a dominant force worldwide. That’s an amazing amount of growth and a tremendous story to say the least.

My fascination with the brand’s history undoubtedly hit a high point during the Twist The Throttle shoot, when we visited one of the Honda factories in Japan and spent time with some of their folks inside their Tokyo headquarters. The way their “associates” (what Honda call its employees) spoke about the brand seemed remarkably different then the rest of the companies we visited. They were equally as passionate, but in a much more concrete way - almost as if the presence of Soichiro Honda still existed.

The tangible nature of the old man’s impact is one of the key differences that separates Honda from the other brands, partially I suspect because unlike the founders of Suzuki or Kawasaki for example, both of which started in the late eighteen-hundreds and in completely different business, Soichiro is still part of the company’s relatively ‘modern’ history. In the grand scheme of things, he really hasn’t been gone all that long. Therefore the fact that his drive and ambition still strongly echo probably should be all that surprising to the general motorcycle fan.

As I recounted my respect for what I’d seen and for what Soichiro accomplished, one of the folks I highly respect in the moto-landscape suggested that if I really was curious about how Honda got its start, then I ought to pick up a copy of “The Honda Myth: The Genius and His Wake” by Masaaki Sato (a former writer for the Nikkei paper in Japan, which is effectively their equivalent of the Wall Street Journal)… More After the jump…

Now normally an AMA paddock is the last place on earth I’d expect to find someone tossing out suggestions for books to read – but in this case, my curiosity was peeked – and after all curiosity is the key to life. So the second I returned home, I fired up Amazon.com and threw down for a copy. Originally published in Japan in 1995 and subsequently updated in 2006 for the American market, “The Honda Myth” is an amazingly fascinating and insightful read that details not only how the company grew into a world leader but also how it internally works. Sato traces the company’s growth through the eyes of every single Honda president up through 2006 (in the updated version) and along the way artfully details how Soichiro’s mechanical genius and ambitious drive, which while the most publically known facets of the brand’s history, are just part of the overall story.

In many ways the real genius behind the Honda marquee is not Soichiro Honda himself, but rather the symbiotic relationship that he had with Takeo Fujisawa, an industrial banker with whom Soichiro co-founds the Honda Motor Corp. The fact that today Fujisawa is utterly unknown is not a mistake, but rather part of a concrete plan to establish ‘The Honda Way’, both inside and outside the confines of the company.

As Sato points out the unique entity that today we know as Honda, was in effect two separate companies from the start; with Soichiro running the ‘Honda Tech’ side while Takeo ran the ‘Fujisawa Trading Company’. Interesting both men decided early on that they would never meddle in the other’s area of expertise and this intentional split eventually leads Takeo to actually spin off Honda R&D off completely. (Eventually the R&D would come back under one roof when the fifth company president tossed out most of the founding principals in an attempt to modernize the company).

Subsequently Takeo tasks himself with not only selling Honda’s ever increasingly diverse range of products but also preparing the company for the eventual lose of its two founders. Both men agree early on to eventually retire together.

One of the great surprises Sato offers is not only a detailed description of how the company grew, but also a very in-depth look at the business philosophy used by top management through Honda’s ascension to the top of the manufacturing world. At times part of this philosophy seems slightly more like conjecture, especially when Sato explains what certain individuals were thinking at a given time, but a great deal of what he details are the very business theories that Takeo created to build the brand. Some like his ‘Law of Transience’ (which states that all companies eventually fail) or Honda’s “Three Actualities Principal” (going to the site, focusing on the actual situation, and making decisions based on actual facts) are a mixture of common sense and well thought out business practice, while others such as the need for ‘minor hero’s’ to emerge after Soichiro leaves are much more prudent.

Sato also makes it abundantly clear that while Soichiro’s charisma took on a life of its own, that was not unexpected or by mistake. Early on Takeo spends a great deal of time crafting the image and public persona of the face of Honda. While Fujisawa was equally as important to the company’s success, what he realized was that both the employees and the public needed a single entity to rally around and that would be Soichiro Honda.

Since the book was first published in Japanese there are a few expected areas where the syntax gets slightly confusing and at times the basic facts repeat themselves, but those are minor criticisms for a non-fiction novel that offers this kind of insight behind one of the greatest corporate success stories of the twentieth century. If you’ve got any interest in a detailed history of the motorcycle and/or automotive landscape, I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of Masaaki Sato’s “The Honda Myth”. It’s truly one of the most unique reads I’ve picked up in quite awhile and well worth the time taking in.