Soichiro Honda: rejected rings and a factory in ruins

Soichiro Honda was a blacksmith's son and started as an apprentice in a mechanic's shop in Tokyo. His name is now on motorcycles and cars all over the world. The road there had rejection, war and an earthquake.

The no

In 1937, Honda founded Tōkai Seiki to make piston rings and supply Toyota. The first parts were rejected for poor quality. Instead of giving up, he went to study: he began attending classes at the Hamamatsu technical school to learn what he was missing about metallurgy. Only after that did the parts pass.

Then came the war. In 1944, a B-29 bombing raid destroyed the Yamashita plant. In 1945, the Iwata plant collapsed in the Mikawa earthquake. Honda sold what was left of the company to Toyota for 450,000 yen.

What they did

With that money, in October 1946, he opened the Honda Technical Research Institute. The first product was simple: small engines fitted to bicycles, in a Japan without fuel or transport. In 1948, Honda Motor Co. was born. Then came the motorcycles, the cars and, decades later, the presence in Formula 1.

In May 1974, Honda received an honorary doctorate from Michigan Technological University and addressed the graduates. The university published the translation of the speech, which speaks of originality and of seeking the solution to any problem at its root.

A note on a famous line: "Success is 99% failure" appears attributed to this speech on quote sites, but it isn't in the transcript published by the university. It may have been said on another occasion, but we didn't find the source, so we don't quote it here as his.

What this has to do with Bairo

Toyota's rejection is the kind of no Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez recognizes: the part didn't pass, and the answer was to learn what was missing. Bairo says that, after losing almost everything, he decided to build things he didn't know how to make, and spent six months in front of a computer, learning with the tools of his own time. It's in The frequency of silence.

The earthquake is the other side: there are falls that don't depend on you. Honda sold the ruins and used the money to begin something new. In Bairo's story, every business that closed left something for the next one, up to the seventh attempt.

There's no comparison of size. There's the same habit: going back to the workshop.

Sources

• Soichiro Honda (Tōkai Seiki, 1944, 1945, sale to Toyota): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soichiro_Honda
• Association for Asian Studies, "Honda Soichiro and the Rise of Japan's Postwar Motor Vehicle Industry": https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/honda-soichiro-and-the-rise-of-japans-postwar-motor-vehicle-industry/
• Michigan Tech Archives, speech of 05/18/1974 (translation): https://blogs.mtu.edu/archives/2019/05/03/flashback-friday-rolling-into-commencement-weekend/
• ASME, Soichiro Honda: https://www.asme.org/topics-resources/content/soichiro-honda