Jiro Horikoshi
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was the chief engineer of many Japanese fighter designs of
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, including the
Mitsubishi A6M Zero The Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" is a long-range carrier-based fighter aircraft formerly manufactured by Mitsubishi Aircraft Company, a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and was operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The A6M w ...
fighter.


Early life

Jiro Horikoshi was born near the city of Fujioka,
Gunma Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Gunma Prefecture has a population of 1,937,626 (1 October 2019) and has a geographic area of 6,362 Square kilometre, km2 (2,456 Square mile, sq mi). Gunma P ...
, Japan, in 1903. Horikoshi graduated from the newly established Aviation Laboratory (Kōkū Kenkyūjo) within the Engineering Department of the
University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...
, and started his career in Mitsubishi Internal Combustion Engine Company Limited, which later became
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is a Japanese multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group and its automobile division is the predecessor of Mitsubishi Mo ...
, Nagoya Aircraft Manufacturing Plant.


Engineering career

One of Jiro Horikoshi's first works was the flawed Mitsubishi 1MF10, an experimental aircraft that never passed the prototype stage after some flight tests. However, lessons learned from this design led to the development of the far more successful
Mitsubishi A5M The Mitsubishi A5M, formal Japanese Navy designation , experimental Navy designation Mitsubishi Navy Experimental 9-''Shi'' Carrier Fighter, company designation Mitsubishi ''Ka''-14, was a Japanese carrier-based fighter aircraft. It was the world ...
( Allied codename "Claude") which entered mass production in 1936. In 1937, Horikoshi and his team at Mitsubishi were asked to design Prototype 12 (corresponding to the 12th year of the
Shōwa era The was the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito) from December 25, 1926, until his death on January 7, 1989. It was preceded by the Taishō era. The pre-1945 and post-war Shōwa periods are almos ...
). Prototype 12 was completed in July 1940, and it was accepted by the
Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrend ...
. Since 1940 was the Japanese year 2600, the new fighter was named as "Model 00", "Zero" or
A6M Zero The Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" is a long-range carrier-based fighter aircraft formerly manufactured by Mitsubishi Aircraft Company, a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and was operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. The A6M was ...
, in Japan also known as the "Rei-sen" (literally meaning "zero fight", shortened for ''Model zero fighter airplane''). Subsequently, he was involved with designing many other fighters manufactured by Mitsubishi, including the
Mitsubishi J2M The Mitsubishi J2M ''Raiden'' (雷電, "Lightning Bolt") is a single-engined land-based fighter aircraft used by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service in World War II. The Allied reporting name was "Jack". Design and development The J2M was d ...
''Raiden'' ("Thunderbolt") and the
Mitsubishi A7M The Mitsubishi A7M ''Reppū'' (烈風, "Strong Wind") was designed as the successor to the Imperial Japanese Navy's A6M Zero, with development beginning in 1942. Performance objectives were to achieve superior speed, climb, diving, and armament o ...
''Reppu'' ("Strong gale").


World War II


Pearl Harbor

Despite Mitsubishi's close ties to the Japanese military establishment and his direct participation in the nation's buildup towards the Second World War, Horikoshi was strongly opposed to what he regarded as a futile war. Excerpts from his personal diary during the final year of the war were published in 1956 and made his position clear:


Earthquake

On 7 December 1944, a powerful earthquake in the Tokai region forced Mitsubishi to halt aircraft production at its plant in Ohimachi,
Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most po ...
. An air raid made by B-29s on the Mitsubishi Engine Works in Daiko-cho, Nagoya a week later caused extensive damage to the works and a severe setback in production. Horikoshi, who had been at a conference in
Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...
with Imperial Navy officers to discuss the new ''Reppu'' fighter, returned to Nagoya on the 17th, in time to experience another air raid on the Mitsubishi factories the next day. As a result of the air raid, the company evacuated its machinery and engineers to the suburbs of eastern Nagoya. Horikoshi and the Engineering Department were rehoused in a school building which had been requisitioned.


Illness

Exhausted and overworked, Horikoshi fell ill with
pleurisy Pleurisy, also known as pleuritis, is inflammation of the membranes that surround the lungs and line the chest cavity ( pleurae). This can result in a sharp chest pain while breathing. Occasionally the pain may be a constant dull ache. Other sy ...
on 25 December and remained bedridden through early April. During this time, he recorded in detail the horrors of the increasing air raids on Tokyo and Nagoya, including the devastating ''Operation Meetinghouse'' Tokyo incendiary raid of 9–10 March. A massive air raid on Nagoya the following night, with B-29s hurling "tens of thousands of incendiary bombs," destroyed most of the largely wooden city. On 12 March, Horikoshi sent most of his family, including his elderly mother, children and brother-in-law, to his home village near
Takasaki is a city located in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 372,369 in 167,345 households, and a population density of 810 persons per km². The total area of the city is . Takasaki is famous as the hometown of th ...
to be safe from the bombings, though his wife remained with him in Nagoya. Though greatly weakened by his long illness, Horikoshi returned to work at Mitsubishi in May. He was assigned to the company's No. 1 Works, located at
Matsumoto Matsumoto (松本 or 松元, "base of the pine tree") may refer to: Places * Matsumoto, Nagano (松本市), a city ** Matsumoto Airport, an airport southwest of Matsumoto, Nagano * Matsumoto, Kagoshima (松元町), a former town now part of the c ...
in Nagano Prefecture. While on the train to Matsumoto, he witnessed the true scale of the war's impact on Nagoya: Still very weak, Horikoshi was sent home to rest after only a week back at work. He returned to his hometown, where he rejoined his family and rested through the month of July. In his diary, he recorded how they could still hear distant explosions as the Allies bombed nearby Takasaki and Maebashi. During the war's final months, Horikoshi recorded Japan's descent into chaos and exhaustion. Though he returned to work at the Matsumoto plant on 22 July, as Matsumoto had been spared from air raids, he found the workforce demoralised and operations in chaos as a result of the emergency evacuations which had scattered employees and workshops around the country. Most of the remaining Mitsubishi employees abandoned all efforts to work by early August and prepared for Japan's defeat and surrender, which came on 15 August, six days after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.


Post-war

After the war, Horikoshi participated in the design of the
YS-11 The NAMC YS-11 is a turboprop airliner designed and built by the Nihon Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation (NAMC), a Japanese consortium. It was the only post-war airliner to be wholly designed and manufactured in Japan until the development of ...
with Hidemasa Kimura. He subsequently left Mitsubishi and taught at educational and research institutions. From 1963 to 1965, he was a lecturer at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Space and Aeronautics, and was subsequently a professor at the National Defense Academy from 1965 to 1969. Between 1972 and 1973, he was a professor of the Faculty of Engineering of
Nihon University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Japan. Its predecessor, Nihon Law School (currently the Department of Law), was founded by Yamada Akiyoshi, the Minister of Justice (Japan), Minister of Justice, in 1889. ...
. In 1956, Horikoshi collaborated on a book about the Zero with Okumiya Masatake, a general in the JASDF and a former Imperial Navy commander who had led Zero fighter squadrons during the war. The book was published in the US in 1956 as ''Zero: The Story of Japan's Air War in the Pacific.''


Later life

In semi-retirement by the early 1970s, he served as an advisor to the society of Japanese aircraft constructors, and continued to receive letters from aircraft enthusiasts around the world. On a trip to New York, he travelled to Long Island and stayed in the Garden City Hotel, where Charles Lindbergh had spent the night before his solo trans-Atlantic flight in 1927. In the 1973 autumn honours list, Horikoshi was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Third Class, for his achievements. His memoir regarding the development of the Zero was published in Japan in 1970, and was translated by the
University of Washington Press The University of Washington Press is an American academic publishing house. The organization is a division of the University of Washington, based in Seattle. Although the division functions autonomously, they have worked to assist the universi ...
as ''Eagles of Mitsubishi: The Story of the Zero Fighter,'' which was published in English in 1981. Horikoshi died of
pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...
in a Tokyo hospital on 11 January 1982, aged 78. His obituary was covered in several major newspapers around the world. He was posthumously promoted to the fourth rank in the order of precedence. He was survived by five children, none of whom pursued a career in aircraft design or engineering.


In popular culture

Horikoshi is the subject of ''
The Wind Rises is a 2013 Japanese animated historical drama film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Walt Disney Japan, Mitsubishi, Toho and KDDI. It was rele ...
'', a fictionalized biographical animated film by
Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widel ...
, released in 2013, in which his voice was provided by
Hideaki Anno is a Japanese animator, filmmaker and actor. He is best known for creating the anime series ''Neon Genesis Evangelion'' (1995)''.'' His style is defined by his postmodernist approach and the extensive portrayal of characters' thoughts and emotio ...
(and
Joseph Gordon-Levitt Joseph Leonard Gordon-Levitt (; born February 17, 1981) is an American actor. He has received various accolades, including nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his leading performances ...
in the English dub). In particular, although the film follows the progression of his aircraft designs, the details of his personal life are mostly fictitious (for example, he had an older brother, not a younger sister). These additional plot elements were adapted by Miyazaki from
Hori Tatsuo was a Japanese translator and writer of poetry, short stories and novels. Early life Born in Tokyo, Hori studied Japanese literature at Tokyo Imperial University under Saisei Murō and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. In addition to Japanese writers of ...
's 1937 novel ''
The Wind Has Risen ''The Wind Has Risen'' (風立ちぬ, ''Kaze tachinu'') is a Japanese novel by Tatsuo Hori, published between 1936 and 1938, and is regarded as his most acknowledged work. The story is set in a sanitarium in Nagano, Japan, where the nameless prot ...
''.


Honors

*: ** Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd Class (1973)


References

;Bibliography * {{DEFAULTSORT:Horikoshi, Jiro 1903 births 1982 deaths Aircraft designers Japanese aerospace engineers Mitsubishi Heavy Industries people Nihon University faculty People from Gunma Prefecture Deaths from pneumonia in Japan 20th-century Japanese engineers Recipients of the Order of the Rising Sun, 3rd class