Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Why the Motorcycle?

1 Japan’s Transportation Revolution, 1896-1931

2 Motorcycle and Empire: A Study in Industrial Self-Sufficiency

3 Know Your Customers: Designing Products for an Impoverished Postwar Market

4 Know Your Competitors: Finding a Niche in a Crowded Manufacturing Field

5 The Rise of the Big Four

6 Bitter Realities: Going Bankrupt in Japan

7 Sales versus Safety

Appendices

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index

Promotional Information

Reading this book is a revelation and a thrill. It is an excellent example of business history done right. Alexander's contribution here is thoroughly original; he gives us a rare look into the experiences of the losers as well as the winners in Japanese business. He will open the eyes of everyone in the field to the significance of the motorcycle industry on Japan's economic and technological development. -- William Tsutsui, author of Manufacturing Ideology: Scientific Management in Twentieth-Century Japan This book is very much at the cutting edge of current scholarship. Besides demonstrating the role of the Japanese military and empire in the early development of the industry, it illuminates the intense competition among motorbike makers in the first decade and a half after the Second World War. The author's focus not only on the handful of success stories but also on many of the scores of failures separates it from most other works on Japanese business and economic history, making it all the more valuable. -- Steven Ericson, author of The Sound of the Whistle: Railroads and the State in Meiji Japan

About the Author

Jeffrey W. Alexander teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

Reviews

"This book is very much at the cutting edge of current scholarship. Besides demonstrating the role of the Japanese military and empire in the early development of the industry, it illuminates the intense competition among motorbike makers in the first decade and a half after the Second World War. - Steven Ericson, author of The Sound of the Whistle: Railroads and the State in Meiji Japan"