Mazda's Kenichi Yamamoto and the Legacy He Left Behind

Kenichi Yamamoto, former president and chairman of Mazda Motor Corp. and the man responsible for commercializing the rotary engine, died last December 20, 2017, at age 95. Yamamoto is one of the most prominent figures not just in the Japanese auto industry but in all of the automotive world as well.

Born in Hiroshima in 1922, Yamamoto graduated from Tokyo Imperial University 1944. Immediately after graduation, he served in the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second World War. He returned home from the war at the urging of a letter from his mother, coming back to Hiroshima one month after the Japanese army surrendered.

His sister died in the Bombing of Hiroshima, but that was not the only tragedy that awaited his return. The family home was also obliterated, and his father suffered from radiation poisoning. To support his parents, he took up a job at Mazda, which was known as Toyo Kogyo that time. Working there as an engineer, Yamamoto rose through the ranks and the small Japanese car company into a global brand. He became the company’s chairman in 1987, and stayed in that position until he stepped down in 1992.

Yamamoto is credited for making the rotary engine--invented by German engineer Felix Wankel--commercially viable. As a pure engineer, he was put in charge of an engineering team--which came to be known as the 47 Samurai--in developing Wankel’s engine. In 1964, Mazda unveiled the Cosmo Sport, which housed Yamamoto’s version of the rotary. Suffice to say, the Cosmo Sport sealed Mazda’s fate as a Japanese auto manufacturer to be reckoned with.

"Rather than profit, we went after an identity and independence," Yamomoto said in a 1993 interview, looking back at his history a year after he stepped down. "More than 30 companies worked on the rotary engine initially. But Mazda was unique. We stuck to it with persistence. Why? Other companies considered the rotary a source of revenue and if there was no profit, they gave up."

"We set our sights on working for the mother country's revival," Yamamoto added.