Shoichiro Irimajiri

Shoichiro Irimajiri (入交 昭一郎, Irimajiri Shōichirō, born on January 3, 1940 in Kobe, Japan) is a Japanese engineer and businessman.

He earned an aeronautical engineering degree from the University of Tokyo and worked for Honda Motor Co., Ltd. for 20 years. He resigned in 1992 due to a heart problem, and started a Chinese traditional treatment to restore his condition.

During this time, it was said that General Motors recruited Irimajiri for a senior executive position at the company, in light of his success at Honda. While he declined that position and accepted a spot as an outside director, if Irimajiri had accepted the offer, he would have been the first Japanese-born automotive executive of an American automobile manufacturer.[1]

After his recovery, his friend Hayao Nakayama, then president of Sega Enterprises, asked him to become vice president of the company. In 1996, he additionally became chairman and CEO of Sega of America.[2] He became president of Sega in 1998, where he laid an ambitious plan using the Dreamcast to restore Sega's lost market share and prestige which took a severe downfall following the flawed launch of the Sega Saturn as well as the Sega 32X. After Sega reported its third consecutive loss, Irimajiri resigned and Isao Okawa took his place.

He was last a chairman of Asahi Tec, a Japanese manufacturer of aluminum parts and castings for automobiles, owned by Ripplewood Holdings.

Honda

Honda F1 racing RA273E 3-liter V12 engine designed by Shoichiro Irimajiri

At Honda, Shoichiro Irimajiri was the project leader for the Honda Gold Wing. In the 1960s he had designed Honda’s five- and six-cylinder Grand Prix motorcycle racing engines (as well as the RA273E V12 engine for Honda in Formula One auto racing) and then helped with the development of Honda’s car business.[2] Irimajiri-san was thus an apt choice to create an amalgamation of disparate technologies—automobile engines and multi-cylinder race bikes.[3][4] He oversaw the introduction of its CBX motorcycle, design of their F1 racing engines for the RA273 as well as being the president of Honda of America Inc.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "The Honda Myth: The Genius and His Wake by Masaaki Sato - PenguinRandomHouse.com". Retrieved 20 January 2017.
  2. ↑ "Sega's President Resigns, New Team Quickly in Place". GamePro. No. 97. IDG. October 1996. pp. 24, 26.
  3. ↑ West Coast CBX. Nexial Quest, 2011. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
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