Honda has always been about fwd. They popularized it. Their first car in the US was FWD in 1967 - keep in mind most cars were rwd up until the mid to late 1980s. They pioneered it, they perfected it, it's always been something they're very good at. They went out of their way to prove FWD.

Now if you were looking for a technical answer, these are the main benefits to fwd:

More compact packaging (good for small cars)

Lighter weight (good for everything)

Less parasitic horsepower loss

Better fuel economy

Better traction on loose surfaces

Better stability

Cheaper to manufacture (more expensive R&D, though)

And until cars started to have >250hp, there were essentially no drawbacks, and in fact due to the lower parasitic draw and ligher weight, a fwd car was likely to be faster than a rwd of the same power level. The only real fwd disadvantage that cannot be engineered away is that when accelerating hard, weight shifts off the powered wheels. It wasn't an issue when 200hp was considered a lot. Nowadays though, even with all the fancy tricks cars like the FL5 Type R have, there's just no way to put down power the way a rwd can. Still, it remains the ideal setup for cars with less than 300hp, imo