ORIENTAL ANGLES

Classic bike fans sometimes ponder how the

Honda factories were able to get their early massproduced machines 'just so' right from the off.

Of course, the reality is that the firm had been making motorcycles for the domestic market based around whatever came to hand in the early postwar years. However, Takeo Fujisawa – the money man of the business – recognised that in order to fulfil Soichiro Honda’s dreams (sic), the firm would need to plan for the medium-term future. Rather than adopt a ‘best we can do’ approach, there was an overbearing need to configure and populate the various machine shops and engineering facilities with high-end reliable production equipment.

Obviously most of Japan’s infrastructure was still recovering from the war and therefore almost all of the equipment needed would need to come from outside Japan. Soichiro and Takeo were able to see the bigger picture; by buying in American and European machine shop tooling they could invest in the future. The banks extended the nascent colossus a substantial line of credit with a mid-tolong-term view on repayments with interest. Once Honda was exporting there would also be the opportunity to launch the company on the stock market and, within a short while, the Honda Motor Corporation would be essentially self-funding.

To varying degrees the other major players did likewise. Yamaha was initially aided by the preexisting musical instrument side of the business, Suzuki’s funding originally came from the existing loom manufacturer that bore the company’s name and Kawasaki’s early two-wheeled enterprises were funded by the parent Kawasaki Heavy Industries, with its ship building and railroad background.

The smaller firms such as Meguro, Hosk, Showa, Tohatsu, Marusho, Bridgestone and the like followed a similar path but tended to be less well funded and, in some instances, either starved of R&D or reliant on older designs, or both.

Within a decade or so of taking motorcycle manufacturing extremely seriously Kawasaki had acquired Meguro, Yamaha had swallowed up Showa and Bridgestone had taken on most of Tohatsu’s designers and engineers. All – to varying degrees – had variously either bought in production equipment from outside of Japan and/ or commissioned the manufacture of very similar machinery.

Without doubt, some of the successes were due to the funding of a decimated Japanese manufacturing system by Western finance and influence. However, a lot of the drive and initiatives came from within via something called keiretsu, a cooperative and supportive group of banks, suppliers, manufacturers and distributors who all worked for a common aim – the collective success of the group. There was also something called shunto, which saw bureaucrats and governmental organisations, both local and national, working with manufacturers for another common aim, the rebuilding of Japanese industry and society.

Over on the other side of the world, postwar Britain was a bleak place despite being part of the victorious Allies with austerity and food rationing still in place. The UK was close to bankruptcy, there had been little if any investment in industry and established firms were still struggling for raw materials. There was also an ‘export-or-die’ approach to British manufacturing which brought in much-needed foreign currencies supposedly to reignite manufacturing and thereby the economy.

The comparisons between the two countries couldn’t have been starker. One was starting again from nothing but with a unique drive, while the other was still reeling from two wars within a generation that had shaken society to its very core. In Britain the directors and shareholders still expected a dividend, even if it was at the expense of investment in plant and machinery. Meanwhile, an alienated workforce that had experienced almost a decade of loss, privations, death and hardship was expected to pick up where it had left off in 1939. Hog-tied by penny pinching investment, marginalised by a remote senior management and egged on by militant unionists, it really was the start of a toxic storm that would see almost all of the UK’s manufacturing turned on its head in less than a generation.