Biography | Takahiro Hachigo — The Setagaya Campus That Sent a Chassis Engineer to Honda

People file a Honda chief as a factory product who never sat an engineering exam. The named school is on Tamazutsumi in Setagaya. Takahiro Hachigo was born on 19 May 1959. Honda's own Tokyo Stock Exchange filing of 23 February 2015 records that date. No primary filing names a town of birth. The public record starts with the campus, not a house. He took an engineering degree at Musashi Institute of Technology. The campus still stands at 1-28-1 Tamazutsumi, Setagaya-ku. The institute took the name Tokyo City University in 2009. The pin is the same ground. He finished in 1982 and joined Honda Motor that April, at twenty-two. The company's later official resume lists the hire as the first line after the birth date. The work that followed was chassis design inside Honda R&D, not a sales rotation. Honda's 23 February 2015 news release says he began in automobile research and development, principally as a chassis engineer. That same release puts him on the first U.S.-built Odyssey, launched in 1999, and then on the second-generation CR-V in 2001. A later chief is easy to invent as a boardroom type. The first documented title is an engineer walking out of this gate. The buildings the visitor sees now carry City University banners. The diploma he carried still said Musashi Institute of Technology. Oyamadai station on the Tokyu Oimachi Line remains the public approach. The walk from the ticket gates to the campus is the one a 1982 graduate used. Photo: campus views of Tokyo City University Setagaya, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait: Matti Blume, IAA 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.