Jeffrey W. Alexander's Japan's Motorcycle Wars: An Industry History is a welcome addition to the business history research on Japan, and the first scholarly history in English of motorcycle manufacturing in Japan. Alexander shows that corporations that had “wartime precision manufacturing and management experience” (p. 111) were able to leverage this knowledge in the making of motorcycles after the Second World War. He also reveals that motor vehicle licensing rules and road-building initiatives helped fuel a domestic market for motorbikes. Throughout its exploration of these themes and many more, Motorcycle Wars uncovers the fierce competition that raged within the industry during its formative postwar decades, reintroducing to history the many unknown motorcycle companies that made up the Japanese industry after World War II but did not survive to become one of the Big Four brand names (Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and Yamaha) we know today.
Alexander's book will easily take a...
