Whenever it is cooler than 60 or so F., it is very difficult to start without wetting the spark plugs. Other carbureted four-cycle small engines that use the same aspirated carburetion principle (except having 1 for the whole engine instead of 1 per cylinder, for performance reasons) and the same ignition principle (a single-electrode spark plug) on snow blowers, garden tractors, air compressors, generators, etc. that are designed to be routinely used in much colder weather are so easy to start in much colder weather, some without electric starters, and with no starting fluid (ether) sprayed into the intake. Is it because the Japanese have them geared so low that they then have to run at high RPM’s and thus have to have low-temperature-range spark plugs, so that at operating speed in summer weather you don’t start to get detonation, which more-easily damages aluminum pistons vs. the steel ones in small-engine power equipment?

If small-engine power equipment were always this hard to start in just mildly cold temperatures, not many people would buy them.
1994 Honda Magna 750cc (the new style V-4 engine, not the V-45) (or, what Honda simply calls a "VF750C"). The choke is manually operated.