How Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha were forged by WW2

Italian brands MV Agusta and Aermacchi started out making military airplanes, but like post-WW1 BMW, they had to shut down these operations according to the WW2 peace treaty. Both switched their factories to motorcycle production.

Czech manufacturer Jawa was founded by famed military inventor and weapons manufacturer František Janeček, who moved into motorcycle production when wartime demand slumped after WW1. He bought the German Wanderer brand, hence Jawa – the first two letters of Janeček and Wanderer.

German brand Zündapp – famed for its two-stroke motorcycles, which won the 1984 80cc riders’ and constructors’ world championships – got its name from the original Zünder und Apparatebau (igniters and apparatus) company, founded during WW1.

Once again, before we get into the detail, I want to underline the fact that telling the story of the rise of Japan’s Big Four from the ashes of post-war Japan is in no way a criticism of these companies.

The significance of Alexander’s research is that while some people know about Soichiro Honda’s beginnings – making piston rings for the Japanese air force in WW2 – and Kawasaki Aircraft Industries’ role in the war, very few know exactly how the conflict put Kawasaki, Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha on the road to global greatness.

After the war the US occupied Japan for almost seven years, during which time the Americans made the rules. The Japanese were banned from creating aircraft and other military hardware, leaving engineers and workers idle and factory space empty.

At the same time, people needed cheap transport to get around the ravaged towns, cities and countryside.

Company management that had spent the war years supplying the Japanese army, navy and air force, needed a way to keep their businesses going and the country moving. Motorcycles were the answer.

Alexander pinpoints the four factors that brought success to the Big Four…

“Each of the Big Four makers’ success involved four crucial components:

“Wartime precision manufacturing and management experience.

“A resultant understanding of the importance of mass production and die-casting techniques.

“Swift development of a product technologically equivalent to European models

“A strong financial position – or capacity to secure development capital from government agencies, banks or major firms – for rapid investment in advanced production equipment.”

The Big Four weren’t Japan’s only big automotive names to come out of WW2. Today’s Mitsubishi Motors is a successor of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which built the famous WW2 Zero fighter. The Nakajima Aircraft Company, which built fighters, bombers and torpedo bombers, became Fuji Heavy Industries after the war and eventually rebranded as Subaru.

Fuji Heavy Industries engineers had to be resourceful to survive in Japan’s devastated postwar landscape. In 1946 they created the hugely popular Rabbit scooter of which more than half a million were sold. The wheels on early Rabbits were tailwheels salvaged from the Nakajima Ki-84 Hayate, one of Japan’s most effective WW2 fighter planes.

Honda

Honda started selling motorcycles the same year as Fuji, Suzuki followed in 1952, Kawasaki in 1953 and Yamaha in 1954.

Mr Honda had established his first business in 1937 – Tokai Seiki – making piston rings. When WW2 started Tokai Seiki was placed under the control of the Ministry of Munitions, like most companies that were useful to the war effort. His products were used in Nakajima planes and by the Imperial Japanese Navy.

However, Honda’s business was small compared to Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha, so during the war he plied his trade as an industrial consultant.

He developed all kinds of factory machinery that allowed unskilled workers (the skilled workers had been conscripted into the military) to mass-produce high-quality products. His most famous wartime invention was a high-speed milling machine for Nippon Gakki (the musical instrument maker and parent company of Yamaha Motor), which allowed Nippon Gakki to dramatically increase its production of aircraft propellers for the Japanese air force.

Like Fuji’s Rabbit, Honda’s first venture into motorcycle production came through ingenuous use of wartime leftovers – a run of 500 bicycles powered by Mikuni generator engines, which had been used to power Imperial Army radio sets. When Honda started making its own engines in 1947, the company machined surplus WW2 shell warheads into crankshafts and conrods.

The next stage in the Big Four’s ascent was Japan’s first motorcycle races, established in the 1950s, including the Mount Fuji Ascent and Asama Highlands events.

This is where Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha established their credentials, competing against numerous other brands in races which were mostly off road, because Japan had very few metalled roads.

Honda’s first racing efforts were woefully inadequate because its four-stroke machines couldn’t keep up with its two-stroke rivals. But the company was learning fast – in 1954 Soichiro Honda travelled to Europe, where he visited motorcycle factories and bought a variety of machines to be studied and copied in Japan

Domestic sales boomed. In 1959 Honda sold more than half a million Super Cub scooters alone, investing the profits in international racing to build the company’s global profile. That June, Honda became the first Japanese manufacturer to contest a grand prix event, the 125cc TT on the Isle of Man. The small team scored Honda’s first world championship point in the Ultra-Lightweight Isle of Man TT and won the team prize.

Two years later Honda won its first GPs and world titles. By 1967 it had won 140 GPs and taken more than thirty world titles.

Honda won its most famous successes in this era with its 20,000rpm 50cc twin, five-cylinder 125 and six-cylinder 250 and 350, mostly designed by genius engineer Soichiro Irimajiri.

Irimajiri’s quest for ever-higher revs to beat Honda’s two-stroke rivals led him to take advantage of a USA/Japan agreement, born out of Japan’s manufacturing role in the Korean war, which allowed Japanese companies to use American engineering expertise. Irimajiri travelled to the US, where aero manufacturer Pratt and Witney gave him the special steels needed to cope with the friction and heat created by his high-revving engines. Back home, he had the steel specs copied.

Suzuki

Suzuki started out making cloth-weaving machines in the early 20th century. In 1938 the company elected to become a munitions manufacturer, producing artillery, machine guns, shells, hand grenades, aircraft sights, crankshafts, pistons and other parts for the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy throughout WW2.

In 1952 Suzuki created its first motorcycle, another bicycle powered by a small attachable engine. The following year its 60cc Diamond Free machine won its class in the first Mount Fuji Ascent Race. This success made Suzuki’s name, which soon changed its name from Suzuki Loom Works to Suzuki Motor Company.

The Diamond Free rivalled Honda’s legendary Cub in the sales charts, the company churning out six thousand a month.

Suzuki made its TT debut in 1960, using its preferred two-stroke engines. However, development problems held Suzuki’s racing project back, until 1961, when it paid MZ rider Ernst Degner to defect from the East German manufacturer which had solved the two-stroke riddle. The following year Suzuki won its first world championship, also the first two-stroke success.

Kawasaki

Kawasaki is a many-headed industrial giant that started out with a shipyard in 1878. It supplied the Japanese military from the 1890s, when Japan went to war with China. First, with shipping, then with aircraft. During WW2 it built warships, submarines and aircraft, including the Ki-61 fighter, based on Germany’s famous Messerschmitt Me109. The Ki-61 was reverse-engineered from Me109s that were disassembled in Germany and shipped to Japan in Nazi submarines.

Postwar the company made whatever it could to keep its factories busy. In 1949 its experienced aircraft engineers designed the first Kawasaki motorcycle engine, the 148cc four-stroke KE1 (short for Kawasaki Engine 1), which powered Kawasaki’s first motorcycle (in fact a scooter) from 1953.

Kawasaki first went racing in motocross, before building its first grand prix bike in 1966. Three years later it won the 125cc world championship and changed its name, the various divisions merging to form Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

Yamaha

Yamaha started out as Nippon Gakki in the late 19th century, making musical instruments. In the 1920s Nippon Gakki’s woodworking and laminating skills won the company a commission to manufacturer propellors for fighter aircraft. During WW2 the company came under the supervision of the Imperial Japanese Army and expanded rapidly, thanks in part to the automation of its production system through Honda’s milling machine. Its propellors were used on various warplanes, including Kawasaki’s Ki-43 fighter and Ki-48 bomber.

In 1954 Nippon Gakki engineers toured motorcycle factories in Europe – the same year as Honda – and decided to base their first motorcycle on the German DKW RT125, the world’s biggest-selling motorcycle of the 1930s. Later that year Yamaha launched its first motorcycle, the YA-1 DKW copy. In 1955 the YA-1 won the Mount Fuji event and a few months later it monopolised the podium in the first Asama Highlands Race.

Yamaha entered its first grand prix in 1961, won its first GP two years later and its first world title in 1964.

Thus the Big Four all have similar backgrounds.

“The motorcycle manufacturing firms that developed successfully in the postwar era were armed with similar developmental assets,” concludes Alexander. “All had gained a significant amount of management experience operating large manufacturing plants during the war, and each had a clear repository of engineering experience, or the machinery needed to support postwar engine production, or both. Most importantly, all four had developed their own die-casting equipment during the war, used to mass-produce piston rings, artillery pieces, propellers or aircraft engines.”

Seventy-five years later, the motorcycle industry and the sport of motorcycle racing are very different. What helped the Japanese manufacturers conquer the world means little now and all four seem to be in retreat: Honda and Yamaha are having a nightmare in MotoGP, Suzuki quit the championship two years ago and Kawasaki recently shut down its factory World Superbike project.

Who knows what the next few years will hold for them in MotoGP and WSB?

Japan’s Motorcycle Wars, Jeffrey Alexander, University of British Columbia Press