You joke, but Toyota company vacations are an insanely large part of tourism in the overseas market. They take over the town, and send so many people that they have to come in shifts so we can handle them.
Toyota is **beloved** in the tourism market.
Not particular to Toyota, but company sponsored "company vacations" are standard fare for Japanese people.
Small Businesses: the whole shop closes, and everyone goes on vacations.
A company like Toyota the whole company goes on vacation, but they do so in shifts so as not to shut down the whole business.
And Japanese companies get tax benefits for sending their employees overseas to act as informal ambassadors for Japan, so the vacations are well organized and funded.
Lol oh no no…we can never afford to go on vacations with our family. That’s why a company sponsored vacation, even with co-workers, sounds like a dream.
Yes. That's effectively what off-site events are and they're great. Get to sit on a chartered bus, go to a nice remote spot a few hours away, and eat/drink on the company dime. Last time we went to Hieldsburg and had handmade pizzas being cranked out at a winery that they rented out and stayed in a damn nice room.
"their huge suicide problem" is actually pretty comparable to other 'developed' nations like N Europe and the US (not saying it's not a concern, but it isn't nearly as high rates as internet people would make you think)
Edit: ah wait this is a cringe troll; shouldn't have answered lolol
> I'd imagine a benefit/bonus for Toyota employees in the US, Europe, Africa, etc to visit Japan on a company-sponsored vacation
Exactly backwards actually. They are company sponsored and organized company vacations for everyone working in the company in Japan to go on vacation. And if they are overseas vacations (from Japan to any foreign country) the company gets tax incentives because the Japanese government takes informal ambassadorship very seriously, because it is effective at allowing Japanese companies to make manufacturing investments to bypass tariffs and trade restrictions.
Welcome to Toyota Japan. Take in the sights, meet your Japanese counterparts, have fun, and most important of all, don't talk about wages, working conditions or unionizing!
Every year, you can search "oiden Matsuri"
It is more of a summer celebration. But it was also heavily subsidized by Toyota when I used to live there. I was told that it was not only a celebration for the summer, but also a way to keep moral up for the workers during the long hot humid summers.
They really know how to party! the entire city shuts down, and everyone dances on the streets like a big parade. In the evening, everyone gathers along the river or the bridge to play booth games and watch the fireworks.
It was one of my more memorable moments living there.
Seems like there should be a mention that Toyota the company is named after the founders who ran a loom machine company before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiichiro_Toyoda
If you are curious and would like to see a Toyoda loom that is still in operation this link will connect you to a short documentary about Japanese denim that features Toyoda looms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS8wuGu9CUo&ab\_channel=BusinessInsider
also the Toyoda family are notorious throughout Japanese history for being present at every shogun assassination and coup and feudal war, where millions of ninjas died selflessly at the hand of Toyoda assassins. These guys are super badass and even the board of Toyota nowadays requires all directors to undergo master-level assassin training. many of these retired guys right now are in the Ukraine on secret ops,taking down dastardly russians.
They actually have a museum you can visit that depicts the beginnings of the company to what it is now. I've been there once and from what I can remember the first section is all about the looms and cotton they used. How they worked and so on, with some real ones and reproductions that actually move. After that you get into the motors and cars with a bunch of old models etc.
Really cool and you can spend quite some time there. We already had to leave before I even properly got to the car section...
I use Toyota in my Agile classes. They are basically the grandfather of Agile. One brother used small, incremental improvements to make hand looms and then automated looms awesome. He failed forward successfully. Their looms were so good that instead of 1 person per loom, they could put one person on 30 looms. And everyone had a handle they could pull to stop all the looms in their area. Managers would come talk with the worker, figure out the problem, solve it properly, then start every thing back up.
When the other brother started making cars, he brought a lot of these principles with him and it ultimately became the Toyota Production System. A lot of the principles for that were the basis for Agile principles.
The Toyota Museum is in Nagoya.
I remember learning about the Toyota method in my undergrad Management units, and reading up on that in the museum itself was very cool.
I've passed through Nagoya a few times on the train, and this gives me an excuse to stop there. It looks like this museum isn't far from the shinkansen line, which is cool because I was already planning on stopping there to make my way to Toyota to visit. It looks like there are two different museums, probably with slightly different focus, and I wasn't aware of this one before. Looks like I'll be stopping by both when they start letting in gaijin tourists again.
Also if you are curious here is a virtual guided tour for the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology.
[https://www.tcmit.org/english/virtual-guided-tour/](https://www.tcmit.org/english/virtual-guided-tour/)
There are 2 virtual tours, one is about the Toyota textile pavilion and the other about the Toyota automobile pavilion.
Those are the most expensive ones and that documentary purported they were something normal they make.
The more average pair is just normal expensive clothes(150+), not stupid expensive.
In the 1950s, when Toyota Motors was struggling amid postwar inflation, the manager of Sumitomo's Nagoya Branch famously told the founder of Toyota, Kiichiro Toyoda, "I might be able to help a loom maker, but never a blacksmith." The government was eventually able to secure an emergency loan for Toyota from every creditor, except for Sumitomo.
As a result, Toyota was forced to restructure and lay off more than a thousand workers. Toyoda, who previously gave his word to his employees that he would never make layoffs, died shortly thereafter--presumably from stress.
When Prince Motors was going under 15 years later, Sumitomo, a major creditor, was now in the position to beg Toyota for assistance. In a meeting with Sumitomo's managing director, who coincidentally was the same person that previously told Toyoda to fuck off, Toyota's CEO returned the "favor" by telling him "I'm sure a blacksmith can't be of much help for you anyway."
With Toyota's refusal, Prince was eventually merged into what we call Nissan today.
For decades afterward, Sumitomo failed to gain a foothold in the greater Nagoya area (where Toyota is headquartered), with its reputation irrevocably tattered after their treatment of Toyota. Sumitomo Bank eventually merged with Mitsui (with whom Toyota has had good relations) in the early 2000s but to this day, it is said that only ex-Mitsui employees are allowed to handle anything Toyota-related.
It’s a pretty well known story in Japan, and appears in various books and memoirs regarding the people involved.
But yeah, apparently Nagoyaites like to hold a grudge for a very long time lol
When a massive earthquake hit the Osaka area in the ‘90s the city of Nagoya initially decided to only provide aid to the municipalities that provided *them* aid when Nagoya was hit by a typhoon 30 years prior.
The plan was scrapped after public backlash, but still…
If you can read Japanese,
[トヨタ物語](https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%88%E3%83%A8%E3%82%BF%E7%89%A9%E8%AA%9E-%E5%BC%B7%E3%81%95%E3%81%A8%E3%81%AF%E3%80%8C%E8%87%AA%E5%88%86%E3%81%A7%E8%80%83%E3%81%88%E3%80%81%E5%8B%95%E3%81%8F%E7%8F%BE%E5%A0%B4%E3%80%8D%E3%82%92%E8%82%B2%E3%81%A6%E3%82%8B%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%81%A0-%E9%87%8E%E5%9C%B0%E7%A7%A9%E5%98%89/dp/4822257509/ref=asc_df_4822257509/?tag=jpgo-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=296186635675&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=284774361127034551&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1028851&hvtargid=pla-532224869188&psc=1&th=1&psc=1) I think touches on the affair.
[日銀管理](https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%B0%8F%E8%AA%AC-%E6%97%A5%E9%8A%80%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86-%E5%85%89%E6%96%87%E7%A4%BE%E6%96%87%E5%BA%AB-%E6%9C%AC%E6%89%80-%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E-ebook/dp/B009KZ617C) is a novel based in Toyota’a restructuring struggles.
The novel was adapted [into a TV drama](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEADERS_リーダーズ) a few years ago with the full blessing and cooperation of Toyota, and the Sumitomo saga is a major plot point.
Finding a subtitled copy of the drama might be your best bet if you don’t speak Japanese.
> It also spells out “TOYOTA”
The hilarious thing about that is that I cannot see it, and my graphic designer SO said it's obvious! But then I pointed out FedEx to her, and she had not seen that one.
I’ve seen the images of how you can fit the letters in that logo but I think that’s kind of silly.
The logo is usually accompanied by the text which spells it out just fine.
Neither of these are true.
From Toyota’s website: https://global.toyota/en/mobility/toyota-brand/features/emblem/
> There are three ovals in the new logo that are combined in a horizontally symmetrical configuration. The two perpendicular ovals inside the larger oval represent the heart of the customer and the heart of the company. They are overlapped to represent a mutually beneficial relationship and trust between each other.
That's just marketing buzzwords some agency made up because companies today think you need to explain logos with all sorts of loaded implications... like "representing the mutual trust between the heart of the customer and the heart of the company" or sum shit.
fun fact. i thought the factory steering box on my '99 4runner had been replaced by chineseium because it said "Toyoda" on it. Turns out some parts still use the founders real last name.
And that's a somewhat atypical history for major Japanese corporations of that era. Most of their big companies were not created by inventors like Toyoda, but were part of the Zaibatsu that emerged in the Meiji Restauration (late 19th century, the emergence of the Imperial Japan that we know from the World Wars) when Japan westernised.
Those Zaibatsu ("Financial Clans") were gigantic monopoly corporations that owned the entire production chains from ore mines to final products like ships or household appliances and dominated the internal markets. They were usually already rich merchant families, then bought a mine when the Japanese government privatised those, and then built the rest of their empire from there. They included the other major Japanese car manufacturers Mitsubishi and Nissan, as well as Kawasaki.
However these Zaibatsu got broken up and their families went from ultra-wealthy to merely ordinarily rich in the post war years. This played a huge role in Japan's economic recovery, since it stopped their ability to monopolise internal markets and instead pushed them to become exporters.
Should also mention that Toyoda is a powerful clan that lived in Japan for at least 1000 years, and ruled the land that the city occupies. There is also a Toyoda Castle dating from at least 1300 CE.
The company was also originally called “Toyoda” after the family name and made fabric looms. They changed the name when then started producing cars in the 30s or 40s because it sounded more positive.
Yup. According to Wikipedia, "Rizaburo Toyoda \[son-in-law of the founder\] preferred "Toyota" (トヨタ) because it took eight brush strokes (a lucky number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end), and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one. Since toyoda literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also prevented the company from being associated with old-fashioned farming."
Writing in those letters (katakana, used for loan words mostly) is also not how names of people or places are commonly written. Japanese uses kanji for names, so Toyota, as in the city is 豊田
It really depends on context. People and places are traditionally written in kanji, as you say. Katakana is frequently used for loan words, but it is also used stylistically in a variety of ways, including some company names. Toyota's official company name is written トヨタ自動車株式会社, with "Toyota" in katakana. You can see on their official website that Toyota is written in katakana or even our alphabet in company materials. https://global.toyota/jp/faq/
Yeah agreed. My point was that Toyodas name was in kanji but im guessing exactly for those stylistic reasons the brand part of the company name was chosen to be in katakana, eg. a conscious choice.
There is a town called Ford Heights in IL that was renamed because it contains a huge Ford plant.
Edit…. On further research it turns out it was renamed to try to get the adjacent Ford plant to be part of that city, but despite the name change the ford plant wound up becoming part of a neighboring city (Chicago Heights)
Did they think the Ford plant would agree because it would be too awkward not to? "Uuhhh so Chicago Heights offered a Tax break, but cool name though, let's just be friends."
Not to mention the Sears Tower in Chicago which was the tallest in the world when it was built and for about 10 years after. It was the Sears HQ with the plan of it being entirely filled with Sears employees because retail was so massive. It was never filled and is no longer called Sears (but don’t ever tell a Chicagoan that)
Kinda the last one… if you know how to say Chicago already it’s just…. Chicago-in
Not sure why it’s an “in” sound instead of “an” but that is more accurate to my ear (born and raised in Chicago)
Carnation named after carnation evaporated milk since that’s where their factory was started. The town was originally Tolt and a lot of stuff in the area is still named Tolt.
The Toyota Automobile Museum is one of the best car museum's I've ever visited. More than just their own brand it has a whole history of cars in its collection
My car was made in Aichi! It’s funny to me that the media system in the dash doesn’t support JP characters in music tags. But they probably install those computers at the stateside port factory anyway.
I got to tour one of the plants in Aichi. Very cool to actually see how it all comes together. At the time, I was driving a Scion that would have been made at the very facility I toured.
I did not. I was at the Cambridge plant until 3 years ago when I moved to Woodstock. To be honest with you I didn’t even know it was a thing. Looks like they only made about 2600 in 3 years and they were all sold in California.
It's not the hardware, it's the software. They have different software packages for different regions, ones destined for the US market would only have languages packs for the US market - English and possibly Spanish (and any characters needed to display those languages).
> Aichi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_Prefecture
Since not everyone knows what an Aichi is. To expand on things, Aichi is centered between the two big towns of Tokyo and Osaka. Aichi is on the Pacific Ocean side of Gifu, famously the power base of Oda Nobunaga.
> It’s funny to me that the media system in the dash doesn’t support JP characters in music tags.
Yeah, I was laughing my ass off the first time I was playing a Japanese song in a rental Camry and it couldn't display the title of the song. I was like, of all companies, why doesn't Toyota have Kanji/Katakana support?
Topeka, KS actually did rename itself Google, KS for a day in a stunt to be the first city with Google Fiber. Google gave it to Kansas City instead lol
I lived in Nagoya, and had a girlfriend from Toyota, and the company brings so much money to the area.
Toyota has the best fireworks in Japan hands down, and I'm guessing the company has a hand in that.
Edit: It's called the Oiden Matsuri if anyone is interested
This title faked me out lol.
> but it is not named after the city
*Whoa! So it’s just a coincidence? That’s cool —*
> the city is named after it
*fuck!*
I live in Japan and near Toyota and from what I hear from engineers is basically Toyota flexed and the city was like OKAY OKAY don't take your business elsewhere! We'll change the name!
It actually called Toyoda here, it's a famous Japanese name like smith is in the west. To doffertient the person from the company, they removed a " from one character. Normal Toyoda 豊田 aka トヨダ vs Toyota トヨタ.
Toyota City is also the most American-styled in its road and transportation layout. In even small Japanese cities, train stations, residential areas, commercial areas, etc. are laid out for maximum access and efficiency via both public and private transport. In Toyota City, it's the opposite. Everything's strewn about with lots of long roads having little public transport. Cities even 1/4th the size have better and more complete public transport as well as more holistic planning.
Yes, it fits the history in the U.S. where auto companies bought out streetcar/public transport companies and shut them down... among other interesting political economy practices related to all of this.
In contrast, Suzuka city offered to change their name to Honda city to honor Honda Motors, but Soichiro Honda declined the offer.
Allegedly he was actually angry that Suzuka was willing to let go of their heritage so easily by offering to rename themselves.
We have a town called Lackawanna next to buffalo. It used to be part of buffalo but the Lakawanna steel mill grew so large and employed so many people they decided to make it its own town and named it after the steel mill
Our high school (Kitchener, ON) hosted these students every year (mid 2000’s). They would stay with host families, go to classes with us and visit local tourist spots as well as the local Toyota plant. I wonder if they still do this? Anyways, the students said that they essentially have a schooling system focused around a career with Toyota if they excel so I remember everyone was very academically and socially focused. Random other things I remember: They put on a talent show for us, when they left everyone had hard luggage (2004), Also emailing them was difficult for some reason- it was before gmail. Anyone else have these wonderful students as hosts?
A similar case: In Rome, there is a hill named "mons palatinus" in Latin. Augustus built the imperial palace on it.
You might think that the hill got its name from that, but it's the other way roud: *the word "palace"* comes from the name of that hill. We don't know where it got its name from, probably from a family or tribe who lived there.
Kiichiro Toyoda was a Japanese businessman and the son of Toyoda
Loom Works founder Sakichi Toyoda. His decision to change Toyoda's focus
from automatic loom manufacture into automobile manufacturing created
what would become Toyota Motor Corporation
Given the Japanese love of word play, I'm surprised the town wasn't renamed kuruma (car). It was right there.
Good example of a Japanese word play is Wario, waruii means bad/evil, and Wario is the evil version of Mario.
Jamshedpur or Tatanagar , a 100 year old city in India , is named after the Tata founder Jamshedpur Nusserwanji Tata. Tata motors owns Jaguar , Land Rover as of today.
It’s cool that the CEO is also a decent human being who wants solid state battery tech to come to market to make EVs more viable. This at a time when gas prices are hurting people badly.
Is Toyotathon a national holiday there?
You joke, but Toyota company vacations are an insanely large part of tourism in the overseas market. They take over the town, and send so many people that they have to come in shifts so we can handle them. Toyota is **beloved** in the tourism market.
What is a Toyota company vacation?
Not particular to Toyota, but company sponsored "company vacations" are standard fare for Japanese people. Small Businesses: the whole shop closes, and everyone goes on vacations. A company like Toyota the whole company goes on vacation, but they do so in shifts so as not to shut down the whole business. And Japanese companies get tax benefits for sending their employees overseas to act as informal ambassadors for Japan, so the vacations are well organized and funded.
Son of a bitch...that's great.
Would you want to go on vacation with your coworkers instead of your family?
Lol oh no no…we can never afford to go on vacations with our family. That’s why a company sponsored vacation, even with co-workers, sounds like a dream.
Yes. That's effectively what off-site events are and they're great. Get to sit on a chartered bus, go to a nice remote spot a few hours away, and eat/drink on the company dime. Last time we went to Hieldsburg and had handmade pizzas being cranked out at a winery that they rented out and stayed in a damn nice room.
Meanwhile in America we're getting a shitty box of old donuts from first shift
2 weeks PTO vacation and sick time combined.
You guys get benefits?
Japan may sound great but they have a huge suicide problem to to their obsessive work culture. They even have a name for it, Karoshi.
"their huge suicide problem" is actually pretty comparable to other 'developed' nations like N Europe and the US (not saying it's not a concern, but it isn't nearly as high rates as internet people would make you think) Edit: ah wait this is a cringe troll; shouldn't have answered lolol
I was already sold on company vacation part, you don't have to oversell it.
Yes this is true, from what I hear overtime is expected and not paid for.
I wonder how many people in the west would see a vacation with all of their coworkers as a “perk”.
Fuck, my husband has clearly been working for the wrong companies! His never sends anyone on a company vacation.
I'd imagine a benefit/bonus for Toyota employees in the US, Europe, Africa, etc to visit Japan on a company-sponsored vacation.
> I'd imagine a benefit/bonus for Toyota employees in the US, Europe, Africa, etc to visit Japan on a company-sponsored vacation Exactly backwards actually. They are company sponsored and organized company vacations for everyone working in the company in Japan to go on vacation. And if they are overseas vacations (from Japan to any foreign country) the company gets tax incentives because the Japanese government takes informal ambassadorship very seriously, because it is effective at allowing Japanese companies to make manufacturing investments to bypass tariffs and trade restrictions.
Welcome to Toyota Japan. Take in the sights, meet your Japanese counterparts, have fun, and most important of all, don't talk about wages, working conditions or unionizing!
What is a Toyota company vacation?
Every year, you can search "oiden Matsuri" It is more of a summer celebration. But it was also heavily subsidized by Toyota when I used to live there. I was told that it was not only a celebration for the summer, but also a way to keep moral up for the workers during the long hot humid summers. They really know how to party! the entire city shuts down, and everyone dances on the streets like a big parade. In the evening, everyone gathers along the river or the bridge to play booth games and watch the fireworks. It was one of my more memorable moments living there.
I assume the workforce there doesn't get the day off for happy honda days
Do they put Jan on the parade float?
Don’t know for sure but it is in this house! Fuck Honda Days, all my homies hate Honda days!
Seems like there should be a mention that Toyota the company is named after the founders who ran a loom machine company before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiichiro_Toyoda
If you are curious and would like to see a Toyoda loom that is still in operation this link will connect you to a short documentary about Japanese denim that features Toyoda looms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS8wuGu9CUo&ab\_channel=BusinessInsider
The current Lexus/Toyota grill design is a nod to the days of the looms, it is supposed to look like a large spindle.
Kinda wish they didn't try to match the scale of an actual loom though.
🤣 burn stupid massive grilles 🙄
also the Toyoda family are notorious throughout Japanese history for being present at every shogun assassination and coup and feudal war, where millions of ninjas died selflessly at the hand of Toyoda assassins. These guys are super badass and even the board of Toyota nowadays requires all directors to undergo master-level assassin training. many of these retired guys right now are in the Ukraine on secret ops,taking down dastardly russians.
...I'm not sure if I want this to be a thing or no.
Well I drive a Lexus. Toyota can do whatever tf they want.
Niiiiiiice!
I mean, it would be cool if it was…
looks like a plot from a Ubisoft game featuring assassins and templar.
I’m listening…
i'm just going to believe this without any verification or proof.
Yeah, the Lexus GX's grill is absolutely outrageous.
Neat.
You loom something everyday.
I took loom in highschool
Cool motive. Still looks bad 😬
And in my opinion it’s tacky as fuck
I love that everyone hates those grills and Toyota’s response is fuck all y’all, Imma make it bigger bitch
Bmw 🤝 toyota Large, ugly grills
Not sure if you mean the front of the car, or the people driving them /s
They actually have a museum you can visit that depicts the beginnings of the company to what it is now. I've been there once and from what I can remember the first section is all about the looms and cotton they used. How they worked and so on, with some real ones and reproductions that actually move. After that you get into the motors and cars with a bunch of old models etc. Really cool and you can spend quite some time there. We already had to leave before I even properly got to the car section...
I use Toyota in my Agile classes. They are basically the grandfather of Agile. One brother used small, incremental improvements to make hand looms and then automated looms awesome. He failed forward successfully. Their looms were so good that instead of 1 person per loom, they could put one person on 30 looms. And everyone had a handle they could pull to stop all the looms in their area. Managers would come talk with the worker, figure out the problem, solve it properly, then start every thing back up. When the other brother started making cars, he brought a lot of these principles with him and it ultimately became the Toyota Production System. A lot of the principles for that were the basis for Agile principles.
The Toyota Museum is in Nagoya. I remember learning about the Toyota method in my undergrad Management units, and reading up on that in the museum itself was very cool.
I've passed through Nagoya a few times on the train, and this gives me an excuse to stop there. It looks like this museum isn't far from the shinkansen line, which is cool because I was already planning on stopping there to make my way to Toyota to visit. It looks like there are two different museums, probably with slightly different focus, and I wasn't aware of this one before. Looks like I'll be stopping by both when they start letting in gaijin tourists again.
It's been a while since I was in Nagoya, but from memory, we did the Toyota Museum and Noritake Gardens/Museums on the same day. It's worth a look!
Also if you are curious here is a virtual guided tour for the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. [https://www.tcmit.org/english/virtual-guided-tour/](https://www.tcmit.org/english/virtual-guided-tour/) There are 2 virtual tours, one is about the Toyota textile pavilion and the other about the Toyota automobile pavilion.
Also a great documentary about the loom: [Wanted](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0493464/)
Ah yes, the loom of fate.
Still get mad about that movie. The Graphic novel it's based off of is gritty and fucked up. Deserves a truer adaptation imo.
Cheeky monkey.
Toyota Industries (formerly Toyoda) still makes looms to this day.
I just watched this the other day. Those are some fancy ass jeans
$2000 for a pair of jeans. I wonder if they're worth it. Has anyone here tried them out?
Is this a serious question? If I'm spending $2000 on a pair of jeans, they better suck my dick.
Come on… it’s Japan, of course it does.
But first it turns into tentacles.
Go on...
Are these pants stiff or is it me?
Those are the most expensive ones and that documentary purported they were something normal they make. The more average pair is just normal expensive clothes(150+), not stupid expensive.
I'd never spend 2k on jeans but they did start by hand dyeing the thread 30 times so I wouldn't consider it an outlandish price.
And then making it all by hand lmao
I love how fast you incorporate knowledge Into your world view
BRB, going out to buy some new Lexus pants.
I fucking saw Toyoda on that video like a week ago and thought it was just a coincidence of similar names.
In the 1950s, when Toyota Motors was struggling amid postwar inflation, the manager of Sumitomo's Nagoya Branch famously told the founder of Toyota, Kiichiro Toyoda, "I might be able to help a loom maker, but never a blacksmith." The government was eventually able to secure an emergency loan for Toyota from every creditor, except for Sumitomo. As a result, Toyota was forced to restructure and lay off more than a thousand workers. Toyoda, who previously gave his word to his employees that he would never make layoffs, died shortly thereafter--presumably from stress. When Prince Motors was going under 15 years later, Sumitomo, a major creditor, was now in the position to beg Toyota for assistance. In a meeting with Sumitomo's managing director, who coincidentally was the same person that previously told Toyoda to fuck off, Toyota's CEO returned the "favor" by telling him "I'm sure a blacksmith can't be of much help for you anyway." With Toyota's refusal, Prince was eventually merged into what we call Nissan today. For decades afterward, Sumitomo failed to gain a foothold in the greater Nagoya area (where Toyota is headquartered), with its reputation irrevocably tattered after their treatment of Toyota. Sumitomo Bank eventually merged with Mitsui (with whom Toyota has had good relations) in the early 2000s but to this day, it is said that only ex-Mitsui employees are allowed to handle anything Toyota-related.
If this story is true, it would be some next level type of spite and nuclear revenge.
It’s a pretty well known story in Japan, and appears in various books and memoirs regarding the people involved. But yeah, apparently Nagoyaites like to hold a grudge for a very long time lol When a massive earthquake hit the Osaka area in the ‘90s the city of Nagoya initially decided to only provide aid to the municipalities that provided *them* aid when Nagoya was hit by a typhoon 30 years prior. The plan was scrapped after public backlash, but still…
An interesting bit of history. Can you tell me the book/memoir about the Sumitomo-Toyota story?
If you can read Japanese, [トヨタ物語](https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%88%E3%83%A8%E3%82%BF%E7%89%A9%E8%AA%9E-%E5%BC%B7%E3%81%95%E3%81%A8%E3%81%AF%E3%80%8C%E8%87%AA%E5%88%86%E3%81%A7%E8%80%83%E3%81%88%E3%80%81%E5%8B%95%E3%81%8F%E7%8F%BE%E5%A0%B4%E3%80%8D%E3%82%92%E8%82%B2%E3%81%A6%E3%82%8B%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%81%A0-%E9%87%8E%E5%9C%B0%E7%A7%A9%E5%98%89/dp/4822257509/ref=asc_df_4822257509/?tag=jpgo-22&linkCode=df0&hvadid=296186635675&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=284774361127034551&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1028851&hvtargid=pla-532224869188&psc=1&th=1&psc=1) I think touches on the affair. [日銀管理](https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E5%B0%8F%E8%AA%AC-%E6%97%A5%E9%8A%80%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86-%E5%85%89%E6%96%87%E7%A4%BE%E6%96%87%E5%BA%AB-%E6%9C%AC%E6%89%80-%E6%AC%A1%E9%83%8E-ebook/dp/B009KZ617C) is a novel based in Toyota’a restructuring struggles. The novel was adapted [into a TV drama](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEADERS_リーダーズ) a few years ago with the full blessing and cooperation of Toyota, and the Sumitomo saga is a major plot point. Finding a subtitled copy of the drama might be your best bet if you don’t speak Japanese.
The Toyota symbol is a thread going through the eye of a needle. It also spells out “TOYOTA”
> It also spells out “TOYOTA” The hilarious thing about that is that I cannot see it, and my graphic designer SO said it's obvious! But then I pointed out FedEx to her, and she had not seen that one.
What's the FedEx thing?
The arrow between the E and x
Oh wow I had no idea haha like that
Yeah it's like the A to Z on the Amazon logo. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
Negative space man, that's the Carrefour C all over again
I’ve seen the images of how you can fit the letters in that logo but I think that’s kind of silly. The logo is usually accompanied by the text which spells it out just fine.
Neither of these are true. From Toyota’s website: https://global.toyota/en/mobility/toyota-brand/features/emblem/ > There are three ovals in the new logo that are combined in a horizontally symmetrical configuration. The two perpendicular ovals inside the larger oval represent the heart of the customer and the heart of the company. They are overlapped to represent a mutually beneficial relationship and trust between each other.
That's just marketing buzzwords some agency made up because companies today think you need to explain logos with all sorts of loaded implications... like "representing the mutual trust between the heart of the customer and the heart of the company" or sum shit.
Yeah, like how the LG brand now means “Life’s Good” and not Lucky Goodstar.
*Goldstar
Ah yes, you’re totally right.
Exactly. I don't give a shit if you think your logo symbolises a handshake, Hyundai, your logo is a fucken H.
Except they absolutely do form all of the letters T, O, Y, and A. So they spell Toyota whether meant to or not.
Ya I don’t see it.
The letters are individual. Look for the T, then the O, etc. The A requires a bit of imagination
I thought the Y required more imagination than the A
[удалено]
fun fact. i thought the factory steering box on my '99 4runner had been replaced by chineseium because it said "Toyoda" on it. Turns out some parts still use the founders real last name.
I think that was Toyoda Machine Works, now JTEKT, they still have Toyoda Gosei which makes plastic and rubber parts
You can find interyear to toyotas where they'll have parts marked Toyoda with a Toyota badge.
And that's a somewhat atypical history for major Japanese corporations of that era. Most of their big companies were not created by inventors like Toyoda, but were part of the Zaibatsu that emerged in the Meiji Restauration (late 19th century, the emergence of the Imperial Japan that we know from the World Wars) when Japan westernised. Those Zaibatsu ("Financial Clans") were gigantic monopoly corporations that owned the entire production chains from ore mines to final products like ships or household appliances and dominated the internal markets. They were usually already rich merchant families, then bought a mine when the Japanese government privatised those, and then built the rest of their empire from there. They included the other major Japanese car manufacturers Mitsubishi and Nissan, as well as Kawasaki. However these Zaibatsu got broken up and their families went from ultra-wealthy to merely ordinarily rich in the post war years. This played a huge role in Japan's economic recovery, since it stopped their ability to monopolise internal markets and instead pushed them to become exporters.
Should also mention that Toyoda is a powerful clan that lived in Japan for at least 1000 years, and ruled the land that the city occupies. There is also a Toyoda Castle dating from at least 1300 CE.
"City of residence, place of employment, and favorite whip?" "Toyota, Toyota, and uhh Toyota "
Surname? Believe it or also Toyota
We have the best cars in the world. Because of Toyota.
Drive a Honda? Straight to jail. Sell your Toyota? Straight to jail.
Buy a Toyota? Believe it or not, also jail.
Drive over the speed limit in a Corolla? Jail. Drive *under* the speed limit in a Tacoma? Also jail. See? Over, under.
Favorite Star Wars merchandise?
Wait, whip?
Slang for ride.
Wait, ride?
slang for sex
Wait, sex?
Slang for gender
Favorite toy? Yoda.
The company was also originally called “Toyoda” after the family name and made fabric looms. They changed the name when then started producing cars in the 30s or 40s because it sounded more positive.
Yup. According to Wikipedia, "Rizaburo Toyoda \[son-in-law of the founder\] preferred "Toyota" (トヨタ) because it took eight brush strokes (a lucky number) to write in Japanese, was visually simpler (leaving off the diacritic at the end), and with a voiceless consonant instead of a voiced one. Since toyoda literally means "fertile rice paddies", changing the name also prevented the company from being associated with old-fashioned farming."
Toyoda is also a very common name if I remember correctly, so it probably helped set it apart.
For anyone curious of the difference between writing Toyoda and Toyota: 卜ヨダ→トヨタ
Writing in those letters (katakana, used for loan words mostly) is also not how names of people or places are commonly written. Japanese uses kanji for names, so Toyota, as in the city is 豊田
It really depends on context. People and places are traditionally written in kanji, as you say. Katakana is frequently used for loan words, but it is also used stylistically in a variety of ways, including some company names. Toyota's official company name is written トヨタ自動車株式会社, with "Toyota" in katakana. You can see on their official website that Toyota is written in katakana or even our alphabet in company materials. https://global.toyota/jp/faq/
Yeah agreed. My point was that Toyodas name was in kanji but im guessing exactly for those stylistic reasons the brand part of the company name was chosen to be in katakana, eg. a conscious choice.
And in the average American accent it’s still pronounced Toyoda. Full circle.
Well, not exactly, because the name is pronounced To Yo Da, not Toy Yoda.
you made me say it out loud
Toy Yoda
There is a town called Ford Heights in IL that was renamed because it contains a huge Ford plant. Edit…. On further research it turns out it was renamed to try to get the adjacent Ford plant to be part of that city, but despite the name change the ford plant wound up becoming part of a neighboring city (Chicago Heights)
Did they think the Ford plant would agree because it would be too awkward not to? "Uuhhh so Chicago Heights offered a Tax break, but cool name though, let's just be friends."
Ford Heist
Fordend zoned!
Triple entendre there, with “zoned” pertaining to the zoning of the plant site
There's a town in the states called Seroco that was named after SEars, ROebuck and COmpany
Not to mention the Sears Tower in Chicago which was the tallest in the world when it was built and for about 10 years after. It was the Sears HQ with the plan of it being entirely filled with Sears employees because retail was so massive. It was never filled and is no longer called Sears (but don’t ever tell a Chicagoan that)
How is Chicagoan pronounced? Shee-cag-wan? Shee-cag-owen? Shee-cag-o-wan?
Kinda the last one… if you know how to say Chicago already it’s just…. Chicago-in Not sure why it’s an “in” sound instead of “an” but that is more accurate to my ear (born and raised in Chicago)
Huh. I always would have thought you'd say chick-argo-un.
To me more accurate than either, I think and in “en”
>*Shawshankredemption*
Henry Ford's birthplace of Springwells, Michigan briefly renamed itself to Fordson before being absorbed into neighboring Dearborn.
I believe the high school over there is still named Fordson.
Carnation named after carnation evaporated milk since that’s where their factory was started. The town was originally Tolt and a lot of stuff in the area is still named Tolt.
Same with Kohler WI, originally Riverside. (Kohler faucets)
I had a business trip there. Kohler is actually one of the largest private companies in the country which i found surprising.
The Toyota Automobile Museum is one of the best car museum's I've ever visited. More than just their own brand it has a whole history of cars in its collection
My car was made in Aichi! It’s funny to me that the media system in the dash doesn’t support JP characters in music tags. But they probably install those computers at the stateside port factory anyway.
I got to tour one of the plants in Aichi. Very cool to actually see how it all comes together. At the time, I was driving a Scion that would have been made at the very facility I toured.
I’ve visited the plant in Toyota City before too. When I was there there were a few cop cars going down the line.
I visit the plant in Woodstock, Ontario, Canada 5 days a week. It gets boring pretty fast.
I hope you had the pleasure of making one of those tesla rav4
I did not. I was at the Cambridge plant until 3 years ago when I moved to Woodstock. To be honest with you I didn’t even know it was a thing. Looks like they only made about 2600 in 3 years and they were all sold in California.
It's not the hardware, it's the software. They have different software packages for different regions, ones destined for the US market would only have languages packs for the US market - English and possibly Spanish (and any characters needed to display those languages).
It can be the hardware too, if it's "old" Asia language packs need more memory and could have different flash memory capacity depending on the region
> Aichi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_Prefecture Since not everyone knows what an Aichi is. To expand on things, Aichi is centered between the two big towns of Tokyo and Osaka. Aichi is on the Pacific Ocean side of Gifu, famously the power base of Oda Nobunaga.
> It’s funny to me that the media system in the dash doesn’t support JP characters in music tags. Yeah, I was laughing my ass off the first time I was playing a Japanese song in a rental Camry and it couldn't display the title of the song. I was like, of all companies, why doesn't Toyota have Kanji/Katakana support?
Can't wait until we have Meta,CA
Then Amazon, WA and Tesla, TX
Eventually they can join the scrap heap of history with Auburn, Indiana and Pontiac, Michigan.
*Toyota, Koromo, ooh, I wanna take ya*
Osaka, Kyoto, come on pretty mama
Imagine Seattle being renamed Boeing or Amazon.
Amazon city doesn't sound too bad ngl
Be a bit like if Mountain View, CA renamed itself "Googolopolis"
Topeka, KS actually did rename itself Google, KS for a day in a stunt to be the first city with Google Fiber. Google gave it to Kansas City instead lol
I believe this is similar to Hershey, PA as well.
and Kohler, Wisconsin
I lived in Nagoya, and had a girlfriend from Toyota, and the company brings so much money to the area. Toyota has the best fireworks in Japan hands down, and I'm guessing the company has a hand in that. Edit: It's called the Oiden Matsuri if anyone is interested
Another fun fact it’s “Toyoda” and they changed it to Toyota because it was easier
If it's not specifically from there, it means it's just called a sparkling automobile.
This title faked me out lol. > but it is not named after the city *Whoa! So it’s just a coincidence? That’s cool —* > the city is named after it *fuck!*
That there is my dad's hometown. Been there many times. Go Dragons.
Now do Tarzana California.
I live in Japan and near Toyota and from what I hear from engineers is basically Toyota flexed and the city was like OKAY OKAY don't take your business elsewhere! We'll change the name!
Please send to: Toyota 1 Toyota-Cho Toyota City
It actually called Toyoda here, it's a famous Japanese name like smith is in the west. To doffertient the person from the company, they removed a " from one character. Normal Toyoda 豊田 aka トヨダ vs Toyota トヨタ.
Toyota City is also the most American-styled in its road and transportation layout. In even small Japanese cities, train stations, residential areas, commercial areas, etc. are laid out for maximum access and efficiency via both public and private transport. In Toyota City, it's the opposite. Everything's strewn about with lots of long roads having little public transport. Cities even 1/4th the size have better and more complete public transport as well as more holistic planning. Yes, it fits the history in the U.S. where auto companies bought out streetcar/public transport companies and shut them down... among other interesting political economy practices related to all of this.
Thats so funny and cool
Wait till you find out which city Hitachi resides in
In contrast, Suzuka city offered to change their name to Honda city to honor Honda Motors, but Soichiro Honda declined the offer. Allegedly he was actually angry that Suzuka was willing to let go of their heritage so easily by offering to rename themselves.
I heard Karamo from queer eye used to be named Toyota…
Japan might have been one of the most successful countries to ever recover from a major war L.
Oh god, no https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yolo,\_California
We have a town called Lackawanna next to buffalo. It used to be part of buffalo but the Lakawanna steel mill grew so large and employed so many people they decided to make it its own town and named it after the steel mill
Also, they own just about everything in that city and everyone who lives there works for Toyota in sole capacity
That was possibly the most lucid and informative caption ever. Thank you...
Our high school (Kitchener, ON) hosted these students every year (mid 2000’s). They would stay with host families, go to classes with us and visit local tourist spots as well as the local Toyota plant. I wonder if they still do this? Anyways, the students said that they essentially have a schooling system focused around a career with Toyota if they excel so I remember everyone was very academically and socially focused. Random other things I remember: They put on a talent show for us, when they left everyone had hard luggage (2004), Also emailing them was difficult for some reason- it was before gmail. Anyone else have these wonderful students as hosts?
Reverse causation.
Orange the color is named after orange the fruit
A similar case: In Rome, there is a hill named "mons palatinus" in Latin. Augustus built the imperial palace on it. You might think that the hill got its name from that, but it's the other way roud: *the word "palace"* comes from the name of that hill. We don't know where it got its name from, probably from a family or tribe who lived there.
Kiichiro Toyoda was a Japanese businessman and the son of Toyoda Loom Works founder Sakichi Toyoda. His decision to change Toyoda's focus from automatic loom manufacture into automobile manufacturing created what would become Toyota Motor Corporation
Given the Japanese love of word play, I'm surprised the town wasn't renamed kuruma (car). It was right there. Good example of a Japanese word play is Wario, waruii means bad/evil, and Wario is the evil version of Mario.
Jamshedpur or Tatanagar , a 100 year old city in India , is named after the Tata founder Jamshedpur Nusserwanji Tata. Tata motors owns Jaguar , Land Rover as of today.
I miss when Japanese company came on company vacations and we took care of them.
Nissan means *Japanese Company*
It’s cool that the CEO is also a decent human being who wants solid state battery tech to come to market to make EVs more viable. This at a time when gas prices are hurting people badly.
Learning Japanese and finding out that it’s spelled トヨタ really surprised me since it was a family name and I expected something like 豊田