Description
Book SynopsisThis informative monograph focuses on the city of Toyota, located in Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Aside from the fact that most Toyota passenger vehicles are produced there, generally little is known about its reality.
Since the 1960s, the city has continuously attracted numerous jobseekers from distant rural areas. Owing to years of stable employment and settlement within local communities, once-new workers gradually build strong ties with their neighbours and actively participate in residential activities. This pattern of settlement provides a unique example of long-prosperous industrial cities, which deserves discussion against a backdrop of the present “de-industrializing” urban economies.
Unfortunately, this favourable situation is now changing, despite the regional economy’s steady recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. Addressing this paradox is the main focus of the present book. The upgrading of the Toyota Production System and concomitant widening class disparity are damaging local ties under severe pressure from global competition. Other suppressing factors are driven by sociological conditions, such as aging, declining marriage rates and birth rates. By comparing two sets of survey data, from 2009 and 2015, and performing fieldwork research in two communities that once were “new towns”, the book seeks to provide an understanding of the present situation of this unusual industrial city. At the same time, a unique theoretical perspective is revealed that does not fit the mould of either the Chicago School or the new urban sociology.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Time and Space of an Advanced Industrial City
1. The Recent Sociological Changes and Slowdown of Community Building in Toyota City
2. Social Ties and Toyotism
3. ‘Motor Town’ and its Agriculture
4. History of a ‘New Town’ in Toyota
5. Neighborhood Association Higashiyama and Community Building
6. Community Building through Festivals
7. History of Immigration in Homi district
8. Community Life and Work life of Nikkei-Brazilians
9. The Relation between Two Life-worlds: Brazilians and Japanese in Homi
10. Community Building and Microcosm of a Multicultural Festival
11. Advanced Industrial City in Transition
