Toyota City in transition: A motor town facing globalization and social changes. By Nibe Nobuhiko, Mari Nakamura, Hiroshi Yamaguchi (Eds.), Singapore: Springer. 2022. pp. 240. US$ 139.99 (hardback). ISBN: 978-981-16-9831-6

“Toyota” is an iconic figure in Japanese studies that has attracted worldwide attention from various academic perspectives. Toyota Motor Corporation has been of central interest in the fields of economics, management, and labor, not only in Japan but also in the study of Japan abroad. These studies have focused on management perspectives on “Toyotism,” such as Toyota Production System (TPS) and Toyota New Global Architecture (TNGA), as well as sociological studies on labor-management relations.

Unlike these, this book focuses on the community issues in Toyota City as an advanced industrial city. Why does this book focus on Toyota City? This is because of its economic importance and unique urban form brought about by being the center of the global automobile industry. However, the significance of this study lies not only in these characteristics of Toyota City but also in its theoretical perspective and the richness of its sociological analysis, both in terms of quantity and quality. An important sociological contribution of this study is its analysis based on two large-scale surveys of Toyota City residents conducted in 2009 and 2015, as well as an extensive field survey by the research group. To confirm this, I provide an overview of the contents of this book, which is divided into three parts.

Part 1 discusses a survey of the entire Toyota City area. In Chapter 1, the authors present their theoretical framework, which incorporates network theory into the Weberian group theory of closure and exclusion, which is effective in capturing the relationship between Toyota Motor Corporation and local communities in the “maturity stage,” as opposed to the Marxian framework, which is based on the concepts of “exploitation” and “domination.” In addition, this theoretical framework differs from the “network analysis” and “social capital theory” that have become mainstream in recent years. Based on this theoretical foundation, to clearly grasp the spatial positioning of Toyota City, the authors classify the city along two analytical axes, the degree of industrial development and that of urbanization within the region, and identify the characteristics of a relatively rich neighborhood relationship between work and residential areas and a low dynamic density. The 2009 survey of residents based on this perspective revealed that residents of Toyota City, who had been considered disengaged from the local community from the Marxian perspective of “exploitation,” were found to be active participants in community-building activities. In Part 1, the persistence and transformation process of Toyota City's characteristics is revealed by comparing the results of this 2009 survey with those of the 2015 survey.

Based on this theoretical framework, demographic and sociological indicators in Chapter 2 reveal a trend of declining community-building activities in Toyota City, particularly a significant decline in women's participation. Chapter 3 documents that factors such as the informalization and mobility of employment, widening inequality, increasing inmarriage, and declining fertility rates have weakened regional ties and reduced participation in community-building activities. A case analysis of retirees from Toyota and other companies who have become involved in agriculture and self-help group activities is presented in Chapter 4. The findings suggest the possibility of creating new industrial-agricultural and agricultural-social networks. In this way, the unique characteristics of Toyota City as an advanced industry are revealed, and the significance of the authors' focus on the regional level is evident.

Part 2 focuses on the community level and analyzes community-building activities in the new town built in the territory of Toyota City. Chapter 5 describes how the proximity of work and residential areas in Higashiyama District, a new town in Toyota City, maintains stable social ties in the community and provides support for residents in their retirement years. This is unusual in a modern city where social ties tend to weaken. Chapter 6 further explores the current situation and the factors behind it. This chapter identifies participation mechanisms in community-building activities, especially among second-generation residents and across gender lines. The role of events and festivals organized by local community organizations contributes to the revitalization of such community-building activities (Chapter 7). This monograph clearly captures the characteristics of the local community in Toyota City and is considered an indication of the significance of this study.

Part 3 analyzes a survey on immigrant workers from abroad and the local community in Toyota City, where Toyota Motor Corporation and other manufacturing industries are concentrated. At this point, I briefly explain the background of immigrants and local communities in Japan and the “invisible residents” that this book attempts to theoretically challenge. With the labor shortage under the bubble economy of the late 1980s, the Immigration Control and Refugee-Recognition Law was amended in 1990, which allowed the immigration of foreign nationals of Japanese descent. Many of their residences were located in the suburbs of large cities where automobile-related factories were concentrated, and their livelihoods were threatened by their increasing economic deprivation. Kajita et al.'s (2005) “invisible residents” theory provides an authoritative perspective on these problems. Accordingly, structural problems in Japanese society, which include an employment system that requires migrant workers, problems related to the structure of the industry, and a lack of immigrant policy at the national level, are imposed on regions where high concentrations of immigrants reside. It portrayed a mechanism that, although the concentration of Japanese Brazilians in such regions continues, they form “divided communities” short on human resources and social capital. This increases the number of “invisible residents” who are not perceived by local society owing to their lack of social life, and local society pays for external diseconomies that the market creates (Kajita et al., 2005).

What insights does this book offer regarding the issues surrounding the concentration of immigrants and their relationships in local communities? The labor and community issues surrounding these Japanese immigrants, particularly Japanese Brazilians, are analyzed through a case study of the Homi housing complex in Toyota City, which has the largest concentration of Japanese Brazilians in Japan. Based on a historical analysis of various activities in the Homi housing complex, Chapter 8 provides an overview of the immigration process of Japanese Brazilians to Japan and the problems of living in Japanese society. Chapter 9 discusses the results of a questionnaire survey administered to both Japanese and Brazilian residents. Contrary to the theory of “invisible residents,” the survey reveals that networks were formed among both compatriots and Japanese and that these networks were the medium through which some groups found employment as regular employees. Chapter 10 provides a more detailed analysis of the survey and interview data. Here, the authors emphasize that social participation in response to collective needs is possible, especially among the settled population. While this finding is important in considering issues of foreign settlement and social stratification in Japan, the authors also highlight that while such hierarchical mobility is observed, Japanese Brazilians remain in a “semi-peripheral” working condition. Despite these circumstances, Japanese Brazilians have developed a certain degree of neighborhood relations and community participation, and the function of festivals in the Homi complex is presented as an important element of this movement (Chapter 11). Together with the results of the survey of festivals in New Town in Chapter 7, this adds depth to the analysis.

Chapter 12 presents the results of qualitative and quantitative Toyota City surveys and analyses. The results have three major implications.

The first implication is that Toyota City's characteristics as a low-density, high-income suburban industrial city are unique among cities worldwide. In capturing this urban character, it does not fit either the conventions of the Chicago School, the ideas of the new urban sociology, or the Marxian structural analysis that would bring about a theoretical renewal of urban studies. Thus, this book is not only an analysis of the impact of a global corporation such as Toyota Motor Corporation on local communities but is also a significant contribution to the theoretical construction of future urban studies. This point also concerns the contribution of the second implication of this study, the Class Theory. The analysis in this book, which focuses on residents of Toyota City and differs significantly from previous Toyota studies, suggests its potential for development into a sociology of labor and Class Theory. It is not a theory based on the Marxian theory of the value of labor but a revitalization of class utilizing the Weberian logic of group formation and closure and social capital theory. Toyota's global production system, represented by the introduction of the Toyota Network System and TNGA strategy in the late 1980s, has largely influenced these developments. By accurately situating these global changes, this book presents clues for the construction of a new theory.

The third implication is that the impact of Toyota's global production organization and demographic and sociological changes in Japan are weakening local ties and decreasing participation in local communities. These trends will significantly change the character of the community of Toyota City, the home of Toyota Motor Corporation. This is a perspective that cannot be overlooked when examining the future of advanced industrial cities. However, it also suggests the possibility of alternative networks, such as the possible expansion into agricultural activities discussed in Part 1, the community-building activities in New Town analyzed in Part 2, and the network between Japanese Brazilians and Japanese in Part 3. Here, I can read more into the central theme of this book: the fluctuation of Toyota City, which has maintained a “middle-class society” regional structure, a high degree of settlement, active community-building activities, and the possibility of new developments in the future.

As is clear from the results discussed above, these findings can be developed not only for the study of Japanese communities but also in the context of various global studies. Although the book is essentially a translation and directed at the Japanese academic community, the content is open to dialogue with other academic disciplines, including urban, international labor, and migration studies. Here, I highlight two points that should be considered for future research.

The first is the development of a comparative urban study. The editors of this book and others have conducted large-scale surveys of residents not only in Toyota City but also in Kariya City, Aichi Prefecture, and Yokkaichi City, Mie Prefecture, and have published the results of their comparative urban research. To make the implications of this book for urban research even more meaningful, it is important to develop it into an international comparative study. Through such international comparative urban studies, the unique characteristics of Toyota City and the unique theoretical perspective of this book will be demonstrated more clearly.

Second, I highlight the nodal potential for the study of global migrant labor. This book focuses on the lives of the local community residents of Toyota City. However, the findings can be read not only in the context of the Japanese–Brazilian workers described in Part 3 but also in the labor market and community life in an advanced industrial area in Japan. As with the first point, the numerous findings and unique theoretical framework should be tested by connecting them to comparative studies on international labor markets and migration.

As repeatedly discussed, Toyota research to date has been divided into two categories: research based on the exploitation of workers by corporations, as symbolized by Kamata (1983), and on the superior characteristics of the TPS. This book differs in that it opens up a unique field of research, both theoretically and empirically. These results should also form part of an international comparative research platform.