dunedin
Well-known member
Yes, the original keel walk was done 15 years ago in 2009 - not sure why dug up now in this thread.
But I guess it does show that it was an incredibly iconic and memorable photo / stunt.
The cost of sponsorship
- Thread starter srm
- Start date
But I guess it does show that it was an incredibly iconic and memorable photo / stunt.
mjcoon
Well-known member
Goes with the jack-boots. Not sure the combo featured in "'Allo 'Allo!" on BBC TV, though...I didn't realise Hugo Boss made them too... were they a particular penchant of the SS?
Chiara’s slave
Well-known member
Obviously a slip of a particular kind. Leather thongs only, of course.I didn't realise Hugo Boss made them too... were they a particular penchant of the SS?
Poignard
Well-known member
Yet, as a few moments spent using this forum's search facility shows, you have no misgivings about owning a Honda petrol generator, a Honda outboard, and a Honda motorcycle, despite that Japanese company's role in WW2 supplying weaponry to one of recent history's most bestial regimes.
Does your virtue-signalling have a geographical basis?
mjcoon
Well-known member
If worn with Bavarian lederhosen, are they a bit squeaky?
srm
Well-known member
Showed up on my FB. Thought it was an ad for a James Bond film at first, then saw the caption explaining it as a daring publicity stunt. As I took the advice given me by Sir Robin K-J in the 80's and ignore the "superstars" in the sailing world I had no idea as to how old it was or who did it.
Apologies for any offence caused.
RunAgroundHard
Well-known member
Sponsorship makes things happen, and some incredible things at that. It has, in some instances, addressed what society thinks is unacceptable with some notable withdrawal of sponsorship from unsavoury characters with disgusting opinions. Do your own research. All in all, historical transgressions as a means to vent ones spleen is pointless. In general, sponsorship and the power of consumerism has been a good thing. Hugo Boss, and many other organisations with a chequered history, recognised their role in WW2 and apologised for that and were penalised as beneficiaries of the Nazi regime. Of course detractors will not accept that, likely saying that words are cheap.
LittleSister
Well-known member
Honda was founded in 1946!
Soichiro Honda's previous company, Tokai Seiki established 1937 when he was about 30, and which made piston rings for Toyota out of the garage where he had previously worked as a mechanic, was placed under Government control at the outbreak of the war (as were many UK and other countries' engineering manufacturers), and taken over by Toyota. By the end of the war bombing and an earthquake had destroyed most of the company's production facilities, and Mr. Honda sold his share in the remains to Toyota. He then set up Honda, at first producing mopeds in a shed with bought in Tohatsu engines.
It is difficult to imagine how a young small-businessman would be in any position to challenge or avoid altogether a wartime government's activities, regardless of his views of them.
There can be few nations that have not been engaged in activities that we would now consider odious. (The British certainly have on many occasions over the centuries.) Engineering advancement has almost always been inextricably tied up with war, colonisation etc.
One would need to live a very ascetic lifestyle to avoid engagement with any organisations that have been directly or indirectly involved in distasteful activities at some point in history.
LittleSister
Well-known member
"I think we need to be thinking more about heroic acts and less about heroic people, because we are very harsh these days. We are an unusual present-minded time, and we are very certain of our own value systems, our own priorities, and we are very intolerant of people who don’t measure up by the standards of today, and we’re in danger of alienating ourselves from all the people who built the society that protects and benefits us, because they fell short of something that may just be temporary, that may just be some passing view that we have today . . .
So I think we need more of an attitude of gratitude and admiration about figures of the past, including the ones we don’t necessarily admire in every respect, and to do justice to the imperfections, and to look on the imperfections of past people and the mistakes and the prejudices, and to say, first as a caution, ‘We’re probably no better.’, so we need to be more aware of what our own defects are, and then to say ‘But we owe them’ and that we should be grateful to them for what they gave us."
David Frum (2024, internet podcast interview)
So I think we need more of an attitude of gratitude and admiration about figures of the past, including the ones we don’t necessarily admire in every respect, and to do justice to the imperfections, and to look on the imperfections of past people and the mistakes and the prejudices, and to say, first as a caution, ‘We’re probably no better.’, so we need to be more aware of what our own defects are, and then to say ‘But we owe them’ and that we should be grateful to them for what they gave us."
David Frum (2024, internet podcast interview)
Poignard
Well-known member
Honda was founded in 1946!
Soichiro Honda's previous company, Tokai Seiki established 1937 when he was about 30, and which made piston rings for Toyota out of the garage where he had previously worked as a mechanic, was placed under Government control at the outbreak of the war (as were many UK and other countries' engineering manufacturers), and taken over by Toyota. By the end of the war bombing and an earthquake had destroyed most of the company's production facilities, and Mr. Honda sold his share in the remains to Toyota. He then set up Honda, at first producing mopeds in a shed with bought in Tohatsu engines.
It is difficult to imagine how a young small-businessman would be in any position to challenge or avoid altogether a wartime government's activities, regardless of his views of them.
There can be few nations that have not been engaged in activities that we would now consider odious. (The British certainly have on many occasions over the centuries.) Engineering advancement has almost always been inextricably tied up with war, colonisation etc.
One would need to live a very ascetic lifestyle to avoid engagement with any organisations that have been directly or indirectly involved in distasteful activities at some point in history
Honda was a continuation of Soichiro Honda's Tokai Seiki company, founded in 1937, a manufacturer of piston rings.
But the point I am making is that it is practically impossible to, as Aja naively tries to do, single out individual companies for censure.
If his high-minded principles won’t permit him to buy anything made by a German company that made use of slave labour, would his blacklist extend to that company’s sub-contractors, or to other companies that supplied it with, say, sewing machines, or needles, or thread?
But instead of dwelling on the wrongs of company directors who are now dead, wouldn’t it be more useful to think about the wrongs of those who are still alive? Those who might have improperly enriched themselves during the Covid pandemic, for example.
Last edited:
LittleSister
Well-known member
You haven't noticed that I was agreeing with your general point?
Apparently not. Well before the end of the war Tokai Seiki was no longer Soichiro's company. As I wrote, It had been taken over by Toyota, though Honda still worked there in a downgraded position, and he still held a minority stake in the company. He sold that stake to Toyota at the end of the war.
He used the money to start a new company, Honda, which didn't make Toyota parts but built mopeds. Different company, different ownership, different product, different premises. The only common factors are that Honda had set up both companies initially, worked in and had a financial stake in both (but never at the same time), and they both were engaged in engineering.
Stemar
Well-known member
I agree with the rest of your post, but I think that, with proper research, it's possible to find companies that use more ethical methods - sourcing, marketing, etc, and others who make no effort at all apart from greenwashing or whatever their practices. These should be censored and avoided where possible.
I may be out of date, but AIUI, Nestle's marketing in Africa a few years ago was just plain evil, and recently, I understand that they've caused trouble with the water supply in a small US town by over-extracting from the local aquifer, and used their legal and financial weight to avoid doing anything about it. I do try to avoid their products.
Aja
Well-known member
I don't agree in this instance. The Nazi regime was foul. Hugo Boss was a fanatical supporter and gained admirably from being able to use slave labour who in a number of cases died of hunger. I'm not interested in Hugo Boss' ethics today. They would not be where they are today, without where they once were.
Aja
Well-known member
Thanks for doing the digging on my past. Yes I inherited both a Honda outboard and generator. I hold my hands up about the bike though. Mea culpa.
Poignard
Well-known member
Honda was founded in 1946!
Soichiro Honda's previous company, Tokai Seiki established 1937 when he was about 30, and which made piston rings for Toyota out of the garage where he had previously worked as a mechanic, was placed under Government control at the outbreak of the war (as were many UK and other countries' engineering manufacturers), and taken over by Toyota. By the end of the war bombing and an earthquake had destroyed most of the company's production facilities, and Mr. Honda sold his share in the remains to Toyota. He then set up Honda, at first producing mopeds in a shed with bought
Yes, I do appreciate that we are generally in agreement, and I'm glad of it.
But Soichiro Honda's 'downgraded position' merely meant that when Toyota acquired a 40% shareholding he became managing director of Tokai Seiki, where formerly he had been its president. Not really much of a downgrading, and not that unusual when a major customer becomes a major shareholder in a company.
In that role he continued as the managing director of a company manufacturing products used by the Japanese military to wage aggressive war. He also provided technical assistance to companies making propellers for military aircraft.
So his hands were far from clean.
I don't know if Tokai Seiki employed any slave labour but some Japanese companies undoubtedly did. I knew a man when I lived in Hong Kong who, after being taken prisoner, ws transported to Japan to work, as a slave, in a locomotive factory (I think it might have been Mitsubishi).
To go back to Aja, I don't understand why, if he would refuse to buy anything made by Hugo Boss, he has been willing to buy products manufactured by Honda.
Poignard
Well-known member
I have a nice Hugo Boss leather jacket that is now too big for me.
Might you be interested in buying it?
Poignard
Well-known member
If companies such as Hugo Boss, I.G. Farben. Honda, Mitsubishi, et al, had been broken up at the end of the war, what would it have achieved?
Apart from gratifying a perfectly understandable desire for revenge, it would have achieved nothing.
Look what happened to Germany after WW1. The heavy reparations levied on her laid the foundations for the rise of fascism and WW2.
Apart from gratifying a perfectly understandable desire for revenge, it would have achieved nothing.
Look what happened to Germany after WW1. The heavy reparations levied on her laid the foundations for the rise of fascism and WW2.
LittleSister
Well-known member
Bitterness about the Treaty of Versailles certainly fuelled and was heavily exploited by certain actors in the growth of German fascism, but I think it would be a mistake to characterise it as a cause, which 'laid the foundations for' seems to imply. Neither the rise of fascism nor war was inevitable as a result of the Treaty of Versailles.
(Fear of following Russia with a German communist revolution was another major impetus that fuelled and was heavily exploited, and there were, of course, other factors.)
The Treaty of Versailles was itself fuelled by French resentment of, some would say revenge for, the heavy price exacted from France in the 1871 Treaty of Frankfurt at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.
It is not difficult to think of other historical and even contemporary examples of grievances, real or imagined, being exploited to achieve other ends.
scottie
Well-known member
I used to do this too all the time
Daydream believer
Well-known member
we are on the edge of forum rules here, but the discussion is interesting & i hope I am not exceeding the limits
I do not agree with your comment there.
If a man is working for his country & believes that his country is right, then you cannot say that his hands are not clean. He is doing what the culture of his upbringing has taught him. His country may have been evil to us, but to them they were serving their emperor in the best way they could. To his people he may have been a hero ( i do not know or care)
Can you blame them if since birth that is what they have been taught to do, just because it crossed the beliefs of your country.
It is all down to beliefs & how they view what is right & what is wrong. Their perception may be totally different to yours.
Is that actually bad, when viewed from their perspective rather than yours?
Is it any different to a culture that thinks it is right (I dunno-let's say) to beat their wives, or another that (say) sends children to work in sweat shops when your culture thinks otherwise?
Last edited:
