Rikuo Type 97 History | Japan’s Harley-Based Military Motorcycle | Riding Vintage

Rikuo Type 97: Japan’s Harley-Based Military Motorcycle

After the break with Sankyo and Shinagawa, Rikuo became the center of Japan’s Harley-based military motorcycle story.

Even after the break with Sankyo and Shinagawa, Harley-Davidson did not immediately pull out of Japan. Instead, Harley instructed Alfred Child to build an entirely new company, Nishiman Harley-Davidson Sales, and locate it in Tokyo.

Throughout the meltdown between the Motor Company and Sankyo, Child had remained on good terms with the Japanese, which helped him continue operations in Japan. He was even able to sell several hundred Milwaukee-built Harleys to Sankyo. Unfortunately, within a year of starting the new company, Japan enacted an import tariff on motorcycles. This made it impossible for Harley to compete with Rikuo, as the tariff increased the price of imported motorcycles by 30 percent. In April 1937, Child had no choice but to sell his remaining stock to Sankyo and return to the United States.

Sakurai’s Cold-Weather Failure in Manchuria

Meanwhile, the Japanese Imperial Army was field testing the new Rikuo. They asked chief engineer Sakurai to demonstrate the new motorcycle in Manchuria for the Kanto-gun, a division of the Imperial Army. The testing ground proved to be brutally cold, with temperatures well below zero.

Sakurai’s early military test in Manchuria exposed the limits of the first Rikuo sidecar motorcycle in severe cold.

After an extremely cold night, Sakurai was unable to start the Rikuo because the oil had nearly frozen from the cold. The Army did not wait for Sakurai to get his motorcycle started, but instead left him behind while he furiously tried kick starting the motorcycle. Eventually he did get the Rikuo cranked, but after such a poor performance, the Army told Sakurai to come back when he had something they could use.

Two-Wheel Drive and the Type 97

Sakurai went back to the drawing board and came up with a new design. He added universal joints and a drive shaft between the rear wheel of the motorcycle and the sidecar wheel, creating a two-wheel-drive vehicle. This sidecar-wheel drive became the defining change that separated the military Type 97 from the earlier licensed flathead layout.

The driven sidecar wheel helped turn the Harley-based Rikuo into a military motorcycle suited for mud, sand and rough ground.

At the next round of military tests, Sakurai awed the Army by proceeding to climb halfway to the top of Mount Fuji. At times, he was traveling up inclines as much as 45 degrees. The two-wheel-drive system also allowed the Rikuo to travel through deep sand and mud without getting stuck. This time the Imperial Army did not send Sakurai away and instead made the Rikuo the official motorcycle of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Wartime Production and Nihon Jidosha

At this point, the Rikuo was renamed the Model 97, often discussed as the Type 97. The timing could not have been better for the Army, as war broke out with China that same year and the Army needed large numbers of Model 97s for the fighting in China.

Demand for the Model 97 grew as the war in China created a need for large numbers of heavy sidecar motorcycles.

The demand was so large that the Shinagawa factory could not keep up, and additional motorcycles had to be produced by a subsidiary company called Nihon Jidosha. The Model 97s built by Nihon Jidosha were slightly different from the Shinagawa models, as they were based on the Harley-Davidson VH model with a larger 80 cubic inch engine.

By the late 1930s, the broader wartime picture was clear: Rikuo production continued under Japanese control after the license relationship ended, and Nihon Jidosha was brought into the story as demand increased. The Type 97 remained a sidevalve, Harley-based military motorcycle rather than a Japanese adoption of Harley’s newer overhead-valve direction.

Rikuo in China and the End of the War

Rikuo Model 97 motorcycles were used extensively in China and were sometimes equipped for infantry support.

Production remained high until the end of World War II in 1945. By this time, some 18,000 Model 97s had been produced by the two factories. They were used extensively in China, even being fitted with 6.6mm and 7.7mm machine guns to support infantry operations.

The retreating Japanese Imperial Army also left behind a number of Model 97s, which the Chinese are rumored to have copied, producing a Chinese clone of a Japanese clone of an American motorcycle.

Although Japan was devastated by the end of the war, Shinagawa survived and became the bridge to postwar Rikuo production.

Although much of Japan was devastated by the end of the war, the Shinagawa factory was still standing and ready to begin production again. That survival is what made civilian production after the war possible.