A Young HR Employee, a Mazda RX-8 and a Mazda MX-30: The Driving Force of Cars

Young people today are said to be losing interest in cars. Yet a walk through Mazda's offices reveals a different picture. At Mazda, every employee has their own way of connecting with their car, their own story of what driving means to them.

In the third episode of this series, we share the story of Isshu Kobe, a second-year employee working in the Human Resources Division.

Originally from Tokyo, Kobe grew up without a car at home and had little connection to them through high school. Yet today, cars are what he calls "the force that drives me."

This is the story of how Mazda's cars came into his life, and how that encounter took him from Tokyo to Hiroshima.

Behind that journey was a simple belief: "Mazda's cars made me a more positive person. Now, as part of Mazda, I want to use cars to bring that same excitement to the world."

"My family went everywhere by bike."

Growing up in Tokyo, cars were something of a luxury. Kobe's father believed that a bicycle could take you anywhere, and so the family did just that, cycling to all kinds of places together throughout his primary school years.

"My dad never slowed down just because I was small. I had to pedal as hard as I could to keep up," Kobe recalls with a laugh. It paid off. He was out of training wheels in no time.

He describes that first ride without them, the feeling of moving freely, as if he had become the wind, as the moment that first sparked what Mazda calls "the emotion of motion."

Kobe's first real interest in cars came in second grade, when a gleaming white Mazda RX-8 parked near his home stopped him in his tracks.

"It looked graceful, but powerful at the same time. I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen."

Yet in a city where cars simply weren't a necessity, they continue to remain a distant part of Kobe's life.

That changed in the winter of his final year of high school, when Kobe lost his father. The timing coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. Unable to attend university in person, he spent his days helping out at his family's restaurant. Watching friends get their driving licenses, he decided to get his own in the summer of his first year at university.

Driving around with friends and imagining his ideal car, he found himself thinking back to that white RX-8 from his childhood. Reading reviews online and in magazines, one comment stayed with him: "No sports car handles as precisely as this." He didn't hesitate. He bought a white RX-8, just like the one he had seen all those years ago.

The RX-8 opened up a world Kobe hadn't expected. He discovered his university's automotive club, and for the first time found himself surrounded by people who shared his passion for sports cars. He raced on track with his car, went on drives with his new friends, and the RX-8 lifted his mood every time he got behind the wheel.

Behind the wheel of the RX-8, he felt something familiar: that same sensation from childhood of moving freely by bike, in any direction he chose, as if he had become the wind.

In the middle of the pandemic, and still carrying the loss of his father, Kobe had found something he could throw himself into completely. For Kobe, his RX-8 is the companion that kept him moving forward positively every day.

Having fallen for Mazda through the RX-8, Kobe had no hesitation when it came to choosing where to work after graduation. He joined Mazda and moved from Tokyo to Hiroshima.

"Tokyo has an energy you can't find anywhere else. But Hiroshima has a calm to it, and that's become a new kind of energy for me."

Moving into the company dorm, Kobe found another unexpected benefit: his fellow freshers. He went on drives with colleagues, and made the road trip back home to Tokyo together with a group of eight who had all relocated from eastern Japan. Though his life had moved from student to employee, cars continued to support him.

It was also in this new chapter that Kobe added a second car to his life: the Mazda MX-30.

"Back at university, I'd always been curious about the MX-30. It's an SUV, but its rear doors open the same way as the RX-8, in what's known as freestyle doors*. There's something a little different about it compared to other Mazdas."

That curiosity turned into conviction during a dealership placement after joining Mazda, when Kobe accompanied a customer on a test drive and found himself drawn further in. He decided he wanted his own.

The boy who once pedaled hard to keep up with his father had now found his own road, with two Mazdas to drive it.

*Freestyle doors: a door configuration in which the rear doors are hinged at the back and open in the opposite direction to conventional doors.

The RX-8 he spotted as a child, his father's passing, the pandemic. A series of moments, each unconnected at the time, had led Kobe to Mazda and brought him to Hiroshima. Now he was on the other side, part of the team that keeps Mazda moving.

Drawing on research he conducted at university into labor relations, Kobe joined the Human Resources Division, where he works on developing the company's employment practices. It was the placement he had set his sights on from the very start of his job search, and it was exactly where he ended up.

When asked why someone who loves cars chose to go into HR, his answer was straightforward.

"Cars are made by people. If the people making them aren't excited about coming to work, how can they make cars that excite anyone else?"

Most recently, Kobe has been leading a project to increase the rate of paternity leave uptake among male employees. It has meant gathering information that was previously hard to come by, and working across a wide range of tasks from identifying problems through to developing solutions.

It's demanding work, but he says he keeps going because of the people around him.

"My seniors are aware of the importance of what I'm working on. They check in regularly and are always ready to help."

Of course, there are days when work is tiring or progress stalls. On those days, Kobe gets in his MX-30 and drives. By the time he's back, his mind has cleared and he feels ready to go again the next day. It has become, he says, something that centers him.

As Kobe finds his feet in the working world, the MX-30 is always by his side.

Kobe sees his next challenge in the Human Resources Division as becoming a messenger for Mazda, sharing what makes the company meaningful with as many people as possible.

Mazda's cars have been a powerful force in his life. Now, as an employee, he wants to give something back by spreading that same feeling of excitement that cars have given him.

That's something he wants to share not just with the world outside Mazda, but with his colleagues too.

"When I joined, I assumed everyone who started with me would be a car enthusiast. But few of them owned cars straight away, and some didn't know much about Mazda's cars at all."

He wants to show those colleagues just how much fun Mazda's cars can be. So he takes them out in the RX-8, letting them experience it for themselves from the passenger seat.

The intuitive handling, the exhilarating drive feel. More than a few colleagues have been won over by Kobe's passion for Mazda's cars, finding themselves becoming car lovers in the process.

Starting from Kobe, more and more people are choosing cars to enrich a life in motion.

For Kobe, cars are the force that drives him. Cars have been more than a way to get from place to place. They have taken him down roads that made his life brighter and more exciting.

The RX-8, which carried him through his hardest years at university and kept him going. The MX-30, which now keeps pace with who he has become.

Both companions are with him today, moving him in the direction he chooses, and toward a future he never imagined.