Notes from Toyota-Land: An American Engineer in Japan (review)

Japanese automobile manufacturers loom large in the consciousness of North American car owners as they watch firms like Toyota and Honda grow while General Motors, Ford, and Daimler-Chrysler struggle to survive. However, reading Darius Mehri's book quickly reveals that Japanese automotive success has come at a grievous cost for Japanese workers and their communities. Indeed, a reader may never want to visit another Toyota dealership after learning what lurks behind the manufacture of the company's cars.

Mehri covers an enormous amount of ground in a relatively short book. As an engineer, he felt that accumulating Japanese work experience would bode well for his future career prospects. However, he got much more than he expected from his time working for the Toyota subsidiary Nizumi. Toyota, like most Japanese conglomerates, operates a vast chain of subsidiaries. Mehri was amazed at many of the behaviors that he witnessed at Nizumi. Women, regardless of their education and training, were expected to leave the workforce in their mid-twenties in order to marry and have children. Senior managers routinely used fear and public humiliation to control their subordinates and continually engaged in power struggles with their peers. The average Nizumi employee had little life outside of work. The workplace that Mehri describes was also in many ways beyond what could be physically endured, and overwork was a known cause of death among workers.

Work and social life intertwine in the Japanese workplace. Mehri and his peers often did not feel like attending parties held on behalf of a new worker or someone who was leaving, but did so out of a feeling of obligation. Choosing not to attend, like choosing not to voluntarily work unpaid overtime, was a clear violation of important unwritten rules that governed group behavior. The Japanese men with whom Mehri worked had little contact with their families because they worked such long hours. The lack of family contact appears particularly grievous as there seems to have been little camaraderie in the workplace. The camaraderie that did exist was in many ways forced—like the obligatory drinking parties. Mehri's real social circle primarily consisted of other foreign workers who were as perplexed by the Japanese workplace as he was.

The way in which these companies treat their employees—picayune as it seems—appears benign compared to how they sought to manipulate the communities in which they operate. Toyota and its subsidiaries would compel selected employees to run for local elected office. Workers would then be coerced into voting for the designated company candidate. There was virtually no separation between capital and the state.

Mehri has made a significant contribution to the existing literature on Japanese industry with this book. Unfortunately, while Mehri referenced concepts like gender and race in his narrative, it seems that he was unfamiliar with how to fully apply these theories to his analysis. However, academic readers will quickly see how gender, race, and class permeated a workplace governed by hegemonic relationships.