This is the single greatest honor in the motor vehicle industry, intended to honor a career and/or lifetime achievement. To become a "Hall of Famer" the nominee must be either retired or deceased. Recipients must have significantly impacted the development of the automobile or the motor vehicle industry. Typically, four to eight individuals are inducted each year.
Shojiro Ishibashi had a vision. He dreamed of supplying Japan’s fledgling automobile industry with tires developed and manufactured with Japanese capital and Japanese expertise. And while Ishibashi had lived to see his company, Bridgestone, become Japan’s largest tire maker, perhaps even he could not have foreseen the company ultimately becoming the world’s biggest. For Ishibashi, his aim was to serve society. The means was to manufacture tire and rubber products with superior quality.
Shojiro Ishibashi was born in 1889 in Kurume City in southern Japan. At the age of seventeen, Shojiro succeeded his father as a tailor. Soon, he changed the business to manufacturing tabi, traditional Japanese footwear.
Shojiro understood the value of marketing, so, in order to get the attention of customers, he imported the only American-made automobile in the region, driving it conspicuously through the city advertising his footwear.
Following the first World War, Ishibashi invented and mass produced rubber soled footwear, much more durable than the traditional straw sandal.
The popularity of his rubber footwear enabled Ishibashi to prosper and his understanding of rubber technology increased.
Soon he began to envision expanding his company to produce automobile tires. Tires were produced only in Europe and America at the time, so manufacturing a competitive Japanese tire by himself was a significant challenge. After much work, he developed his first tire prototype in 1930.
With a limited domestic market, Ishibashi intended to sell his tires in Europe and America. Therefore, he needed a brand name that would be easily understood overseas. He initially selected the name Stonebridge, a direct translation of the name Ishibashi. However, he finally decided upon the name Bridgestone, reversing the order to produce a name that Ishibashi hoped would be more familiar to people around the world.
In 1931, the Bridgestone Tire Company was born. For Bridgestone’s new corporate symbol, Ishibashi chose the keystone, which is critical in supporting the load of a bridge or arch.
When World War II ended, Ishibashi began rebuilding his company and moved his head office to Tokyo.
He visited America in 1950 and learned the cutting edge technologies of the tire industry at the time. In later years, Bridgestone would reciprocate by sharing its own technologies with the tire industry worldwide.
Bridgestone continued to grow, and Shojiro Ishibashi continued his company’s expansion around the world.
With the number of automobile owners increasing in the Japanese domestic market, Ishibashi established a nationwide network of tire stores, all of a consistent design. Ishibashi also founded Japan’s first tire technical center. In 1960, a modern manufacturing plant, incorporating the latest technology, was completed in Tokyo. Expanses of green trees and grass surrounded the modern plant as Ishibashi strove to improve the work environment of his employees.
Out of his affection for art and his desire for society to benefit, Ishibashi founded the Ishibashi Cultural Center, and the Bridgestone Museum of Art, and was a major supporter of the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art, having constructed the building that houses this institution.
Shojiro Ishibashi died in 1976 at the age of 87, but not before seeing his company transformed from a maker of simple footwear, to one of the largest and most technologically advanced companies in the world.
