Soichiro Honda

I love that Honda started as a grease-stained kid in a Shizuoka repair shop and basically refused to let school certificates tell him what he could build. There's something gloriously stubborn about a guy who, with the company in trouble, declared they'd go race the Isle of Man TT and used that to rally everyone. He was known to whack people on the head with a tool when their work was sloppy, yet handed the entire business to Takeo Fujisawa so he could stay where his heart was: on the floor, obsessing over engines. To me that's the dream version of a maker, someone who fought over whether a Super Cub engine should be two-stroke or four-stroke. He's loud, human, impatient, and weirdly inspiring. Most "visionaries" bore me; this one I'd actually want to grab a beer with.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Soichiro Honda (November 17, 1906 – August 5, 1991) was a Japanese entrepreneur and engineer born in Mitsuo Village, Iwata District, Shizuoka Prefecture (present-day Tenryu Ward, Hamamatsu). After apprenticing at a Tokyo auto-repair shop, he struck out independently in 1928 and founded Honda Motor Co., Ltd. in 1948, serving as its president until 1973. He hired Takeo Fujisawa in 1949 to run the financial side, and in 1989 he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame near Detroit.

Name (English)

Soichiro Honda

Name (Japanese)

本田宗一郎

Reading

ほんだ そういちろう

Born

November 17, 1906 – August 5, 1991

Origin

Mitsuo Village, Iwata District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan (present-day Tenryu Ward, Hamamatsu)

Occupation

Entrepreneur / Engineer / Automobile and Motorcycle Developer

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Horse

Agency history

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. — Representative Director and President (1948–1973)
Honda Motor Co., Ltd. — Director and Supreme Advisor (c. 1973–1983)

Active years

1928–1991

Elementary school

Futamata Town Futamata Ordinary Higher Elementary School (present-day Hamamatsu City Futamata Elementary School) — graduated

High school

Did not advance to high school

University

Hamamatsu Higher Technical School (present-day Faculty of Engineering, Shizuoka University) — auditor (not a formal enrolled student)

Debut

1928 — opened the Hamamatsu branch of Art Shokai independently, engaging in automobile repair

Awards & achievements

• 1952 — Blue Ribbon Medal (Japan)
• 1980 — Holley Medal, American Society of Mechanical Engineers
• 1981 — Order of the Sacred Treasure, First Class (Japan)
• 1987 — UNEP Global 500 Award
• 1989 — Inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame (USA) — first Asian inductee
• 1990 — FIA Gold Medal
• 1991 — Junior First Rank and Order of the Rising Sun, Paulownia Flowers with Grand Cordon (posthumous)
• 1994 — Japan Automotive Hall of Fame inductee

Timeline

1. 1906Born on November 17 in Mitsuo Village, Iwata District, Shizuoka Prefecture (present-day Tenryu Ward, Hamamatsu)
2. 1922Moved to Tokyo and entered apprenticeship at Art Shokai, an automobile repair shop in Yushima
3. 1928Opened the Hamamatsu branch of Art Shokai independently
4. 1935Married Sachi Isobe
5. 1937Became president of Tokai Seiki Heavy Industry (now Tokai Seiki)
6. 1948Founded Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and became its representative director
7. 1973Retired as president at age 67; became director and supreme advisor
8. 1989Inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame (USA) — first Asian to receive the honor
9. 1991Died on August 5 at age 84 from liver failure

Spouse

Sachi Isobe (married 1935)

Children

3 children: eldest son Hirotoshi, second son Katsuhisa, eldest daughter Keiko

Hobbies

• Interest in aviation and aircraft
• Appreciation of painting

Specialties

• Engine design and development
• Metalworking

Motto

"Do not imitate others." / "Nothing is born from a person without dreams."

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9C%AC%E7%94%B0%E5%AE%97%E4%B8%80%E9%83%8E
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q313304

Tags

• Entrepreneur
• Honda Founder
• From Shizuoka Prefecture
• Automobile
• Motorcycle
• Engineer
• Showa Era Business Leader

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.