Toyota Motor - Company History
- Founding
- In September 1933 an automobile department was placed inside Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, and Toyoda Kiichiro began researching motor cars at Kariya in Aichi prefecture. The parent itself had been spun out in order to mass-produce the Type G automatic loom that Toyoda Sakichi had brought to practical use. Trucks went on sale in November 1935 and passenger cars in September 1936, and in August 1937 the automobile department was separated off as Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. The shares were listed on the Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka stock exchanges in May 1949, but the Dodge Line of that same year cut demand away and forced a rescue plan of 1,600 voluntary redundancies and a split between manufacturing and sales. Kiichiro took responsibility for the redundancies and stepped down in June 1950, succeeded by Ishida Taizo, who came from the loom company.
- The Decision
- Toyota built its plants before the demand existed, cut costs through volume, and made the demand itself. In November 1938, at a time when there was no guarantee a domestically built passenger car would sell, it put up the Koromo plant — some two million square metres, about fifty times the site at Kariya — as an integrated volume plant dedicated to a popular car. In August 1959 it built Motomachi, the first plant in Japan dedicated to passenger cars; ground was broken for 5,000 units a month while the buildings alone were designed to take 10,000, and by December that year output had reached 10,453 a month. Nissan’s Oppama and Isuzu’s Fujisawa were finished three years later. In September 1966 it concentrated its investment on the Takaoka plant, built for the Corolla alone, and cut costs by holding one plant to one model. The Corolla set Japan’s motorisation properly in motion, and competition in passenger cars moved from the breadth of the dealer network to the scale and speed of capital investment. In 1984 it established NUMMI as a fifty-fifty joint venture with General Motors, carrying the whole production method across to North America.
- Today
- More than a fifth of operating profit comes not from building cars but from lending on them after the sale. Of revenue of $320.5B (¥50.69tn) in the year to March 2026, the automotive business accounted for $285.8B (¥45.2tn), nine-tenths of the total; but against its segment profit of $17.6B (¥2.78tn), the financial services business booked $5.4B (¥852bn) on sales of $30.5B (¥4.82tn). Loans and leases began with the founding of Toyota Motor Credit in 1982 and thickened after Toyota started producing on its own in Kentucky in 1986. North America is the largest market, sales in the United States coming to $116.9B (¥18.49tn) against $69.5B (¥10.99tn) in Japan. Operating profit itself fell from $32.0B (¥4.8tn) the year before to $23.8B (¥3.77tn). Producing locally and lending locally is what leaves interest income on the books even when the margin on the vehicles themselves is thin.
- Competition
- Among Japanese passenger-car makers there are few left with no capital tie to Toyota. It made Daihatsu a subsidiary in 1998 and Hino Motors in 2001, raised its stake in Subaru in stages from 2006, and concluded capital alliances with Mazda in August 2017 and Isuzu Motors in March 2021. Its holding in Subaru reached 21.46 per cent as of March 2026. Outside that capital web there remain only Honda and the Nissan group, which took Mitsubishi Motors in with a 34 per cent stake. The competition turns less on the products themselves than on how far the cost of developing electrification can be shared with others, and Toyota keeps those partners inside its own camp.
Timeline
1890–1938From the loom patent to a car business set free
- 1891Toyoda Sakichi is granted patent no. 1195 for a wooden hand loom
- 1926Toyoda Automatic Loom Works incorporated at Kariya with ¥1m capital
- 1929The British patent for the automatic loom is sold to Platt Brothers
- 1933An automobile research department is set up inside the loom works
- 1935The A1 prototype saloon and G1 truck are completed; the truck goes on sale
- 1936The passenger car goes on sale; the 1936 law makes car making a licensed business
- 1937Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. founded with capital of ¥12m
- 1938The Koromo head-office plant is completed and fixed as the founding anniversary
1939–1959Defeat, a broken cash position, and a restart with sales split off
- 1940Toyoda Steel Works (today Aichi Steel) established
- 1941Toyoda Machine Works (today JTEKT) established
- 1945The Koromo plant is bombed; truck production resumes three days later
- 1945Toyota Auto Body Industry established to take over body manufacturing
- 1949Shares listed on the Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka stock exchanges
- 1949Aichi Kogyo (today Aisin) established
- 1949Nippondenso (today Denso) established as a second company
- 19501,600 voluntary redundancies; Kiichiro resigns and Ishida Taizo succeeds him
- 1950Toyota Motor Sales established, splitting sales from manufacturing
- 1955The first-generation Crown and the Toyopet Master go on sale
- 1957Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. established
- 1959Motomachi, Japan’s first plant dedicated to passenger cars, is completed
1960–1988The Corolla, capacity ahead of demand, and the crossing to North America
- 1960Toyota Central R&D Labs established
- 1965The Kamigo plant, dedicated to engines, is completed
- 1966The Corolla goes on sale and the dedicated Takaoka plant starts up
- 1966Business tie-up with Hino Motors
- 1967Nakagawa Fukio dies suddenly; Toyoda Eiji becomes president
- 1967Business tie-up with Daihatsu
- 1973The first oil crisis; exports grow from 1974 with the Corolla at their head
- 1981Talks with Ford on joint small-car production in the US break down
- 1982Toyota Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Sales merge into Toyota Motor Corporation
- 1982Toyota Motor Credit established
- 1984NUMMI, a fifty-fifty joint venture with GM, is established in California
- 1985The board decides on wholly owned plants in the US and Canada; Kentucky chosen
- 1986Toyota Motor Manufacturing U.S.A. established
1989–2026Number one in the world, and the rebuilds over quality and earnings
- 1989The Lexus brand is launched in North America
- 1989Toyota Motor Manufacturing (UK) established
- 1991Toyota Motor Kyushu established
- 1995Okuda Hiroshi becomes president, the first career man from outside the family in 28 years
- 1997The Prius, the world’s first mass-produced hybrid, goes on sale
- 1998Daihatsu becomes a subsidiary
- 1999Cho Fujio becomes president
- 2001Hino Motors becomes a subsidiary
- 2005Watanabe Katsuaki becomes president
- 2009The first operating loss and net loss in the company’s history
- 2009Toyoda Akio becomes president
- 2010The global recall crisis and the rebuilding of quality assurance
- 2011Three Tohoku affiliates are consolidated into Toyota Motor East Japan
- 2017Capital and business tie-up with Mazda
- 2020Prime Planet Energy & Solutions established with Panasonic
- 2023Sato Koji becomes president; Toyoda Akio moves up to chairman
- 2026CFO Kon Kenta named president after Sato’s three years in office
Founding Story
1890–1938From the loom patent to a car business set free
Toyota began as a department inside a loom maker. Toyoda Sakichi’s automatic loom paid for the research — the British patent sold to Platt Brothers in 1929 funded his son Kiichiro’s car project — and by 1937 that department had been cut loose as Toyota Motor Co., which a year later opened a plant at Koromo roughly fifty times the size of the loom works. The vessel was built long before there was demand to fill it, and that order of operations became the company’s habit.
Sakichi’s inventions and the making of the loom business
Toyoda Sakichi (豊田佐吉) was born on 14 February 1867 in Yamaguchi village, Shikichi district, Totomi province[1] — today Kosai in Shizuoka prefecture. Inspired by Saikoku Risshihen, a book of self-improvement published in 1870[2], he set his mind on inventing a loom when the Patent Monopoly Ordinance was promulgated in 1885[3]. He filed for a wooden hand loom in 1890 and was granted patent no. 1195 on 14 May 1891[4]. Toyoda Kiichiro (豊田喜一郎) was born on 11 June 1894 as Sakichi’s eldest son[5], and grew up on the grounds of his father’s works, watching things being made at close quarters. He looked back in later years on that childhood exposure to machinery: an engineer must think of machines as family, and the most important thing is to be touching them at all times.
[6]
In 1926, acting on his father’s wishes, Kiichiro drew up plans for a new factory at Kariya in Hekikai district, Aichi prefecture, and on 18 November that year Toyoda Automatic Loom Works was incorporated with capital of ¥1m[7]. Toyoda Risaburo (豊田利三郎) became president and Kiichiro managing director[8]. Kiichiro worked on refining the non-stop shuttle-change automatic loom his father had invented[9], and in 1929 sold its British patent to Platt Brothers of England[10]. The proceeds became the seed money for automotive research[11]. In Japan at the time Ford and General Motors ran knock-down assembly plants inside the country[12], and volume production of a domestically made car had barely begun.
On 1 September 1933 Kiichiro set up an automobile manufacturing department inside Toyoda Automatic Loom Works[13]. In October the research began by stripping down an American-built Chevrolet saloon, sketching its parts and working them up into drawings for prototypes[14]. Foundry techniques developed for looms were applied to engine casting, and cylinder blocks were prototyped over and over[15]. The corporate-history section of the company’s 有価証券報告書 (annual securities report) records this moment as the start of automotive research[16]. Formal board approval was obtained after the fact[17]: Kiichiro pushed the new venture forward as an accomplished fact while its prospects were still unclear. What underwrote the judgement was the expectation that the money earned from looms, and the machine-tool skills that came with them, could be turned directly to machining car parts[18].
From prototypes to licensed manufacturer under the 1936 law
In 1935 the automobile department completed the A1 prototype saloon and the G1 truck[19], and left the prototype stage behind. In November of that year it managed to put the truck on sale[20], and in September 1936 the passenger car followed[21]. Toyoda Eiji (豊田英二), who joined the automobile department of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works in April 1936[22], was ordered by Kiichiro to open a laboratory at Shibaura in Tokyo, where he handled radiators and the strip-down analysis of the German DKW, among other work[23]. Eiji was Kiichiro’s younger cousin and a graduate of the engineering faculty of Tokyo Imperial University[24]. The Shibaura laboratory existed to accumulate fundamental technology, its role being to bring in-house the component technologies that volume production would require[25].
In 1936 the Japanese government promulgated the Automobile Manufacturing Industry Law to push domestic car production, and designated the automotive arm of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works a licensed company[26]. Being licensed brought protection backed by military demand, but the scale of investment that volume production required went beyond what the loom business’s own finances could carry[27]. Kiichiro was forced to separate the automobile department from the loom business, and began preparing for it to stand alone[28]. The law had the effect of shutting foreign-owned assembly firms out of the domestic market[29], giving Japanese makers their opening at volume. Under an industrial policy that traded protection and control for domestic production, Toyota gained in military procurement a demand it could count on[30].
On 28 August 1937 Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. was incorporated with capital of ¥12m[31]. Toyoda Risaburo became president and Kiichiro vice-president[32]. The corporate-history section of the securities report enters August 1937 as separation and independence from Toyoda Automatic Loom Works — the founding of the company — with capital recorded as ¥12,000 thousand[33]. Immediately after the separation Kiichiro addressed the representatives of Toyota dealerships from across the country, setting out a corporate philosophy of building excellent cars at low prices[34]. The Shibaura laboratory became the new company’s research division[35], and in May that year Eiji transferred to head office at Kariya to take charge of a newly created inspection and improvement department[36].
The Koromo plant and the idea of flow production
On 3 November 1938 the head-office plant was completed at Koromo in Aichi prefecture — the town now called Toyota City — and the company fixed that date as its founding anniversary[37]. The site covered some two million square metres, about fifty times the loom works at Kariya[38]. It was an investment that put in place a system for integrated volume production of a popular car before the demand for one had grown[39]. The Koromo plant held casting, machining and assembly on a single site[40], sparing the trouble of hauling parts between factories. In designing it, Kiichiro laid the machines out in the order of the process[41]. That was the reverse of the thinking behind the typical factory of the day, which gathered machines of the same kind together by department[42].
For the move to Koromo, Kiichiro wrote a meticulous pamphlet of his own setting out his intention to introduce flow production[43]. At Kariya the prevailing method was to put semi-finished castings into a warehouse first and machine them later[44]; Kiichiro’s principle instead was to make, each day, only what was needed in the quantity needed[45]. Eiji gave this the Japanese-English name just in time[46]. Under wartime controls on materials, however, the premise that the parts you needed would arrive when you needed them collapsed, and the method never took hold[47]. Production that bypassed the warehouse tied up less capital in work in progress[48] — an urgent consideration for a late entrant short of capital.
As the war in China dragged on, demand for trucks rose sharply and the Koromo plant met its target of 500 vehicles a month[49]. Output was turned over to increasing military truck production, and development of passenger cars effectively stopped[50]. Toyoda Steel Works — today Aichi Steel — was established in March 1940[51] and Toyoda Machine Works — today JTEKT — in May 1941[52], so that steel and precision machine tools could be supplied from within the group. In August 1945 the vehicle-body manufacturing business was transferred to Toyota Auto Body Industry, now Toyota Auto Body[53]. In November 1943 the company absorbed Chuo Boseki to broaden its base[54], but shortages of materials sent production into a steep decline in the later part of the war[55].
1939–1959Defeat, a broken cash position, and a restart with sales split off
The war ended with a quarter of the Koromo plant destroyed, and four years later the company came within reach of collapse: the Dodge Line dried up demand, the money owed on instalment sales stopped coming in, and Toyota survived only on a syndicated bank loan — at the cost of 1,600 voluntary redundancies, its founder’s resignation and the splitting off of its sales arm. What it built in the decade that followed — the kanban system, the first Crown and the Motomachi plant — took revenue from $51.7M (¥19bn) in 1954 to $197.8M (¥71bn) in 1959, and left a company determined never to be at a bank’s mercy again.
From bomb damage to trucks back on the line
On 14 August 1945 the Koromo plant was bombed by American B-29s and about a quarter of it was destroyed[56]. The war ended the following day, and on 16 August vice-president Akai Hisayoshi (赤井久義) told the assembled executives that Toyota had a responsibility to build and supply the trucks reconstruction would need, urging them to start again[57]. The plant resumed production on 17 August, abandoning the material-saving wartime specification and switching to trucks built to the standard one[58]. Much of the equipment had escaped the raid and would run as soon as materials could be found[59]. Post-war production planning was reassembled from the ground up, beginning with a recount of the machine tools that had survived the fire[60]. Under the occupation, passenger-car production was banned[61], so for the time being trucks alone carried the business.
Anticipating that car production might be prohibited outright, Kiichiro cast about for new businesses tied to the necessities of life — pottery, or making ちくわ fish sausage — in order to protect his employees’ livelihoods[62]. When permission to continue building trucks and buses, though not passenger cars, came through in November 1945[63], those schemes lapsed. In April 1946 the company established Kanto Electric Automobile Manufacturing, today Toyota Motor East Japan, giving it a production foothold in eastern Japan[64]. In July 1948 it set up Nisshin Tsusho, now Toyota Tsusho, hiving off the procurement function[65]. In May 1949 Toyota listed its shares on the Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka stock exchanges[66].
In 1949 the severe fiscal austerity of the occupation’s Dodge Line caused demand for cars to collapse[67]. Collections on instalment sales stalled, squeezing manufacturing funds directly[68]. Toyota resorted to soliciting 1,600 voluntary redundancies and to a rescue plan that split manufacturing and sales into separate companies[69]. Kiichiro took responsibility for the redundancies and resigned as president in June 1950; he was succeeded by Ishida Taizo (石田退三), who came from Toyoda Automatic Loom Works[70]. A cash position driven to the edge of bankruptcy was saved by a syndicated loan from a group of banks, orchestrated by the manager of the Bank of Japan’s Nagoya branch[71]. Eiji looked back on it in later years: having been through an experience that took us to the brink of collapse, the managers who came after worked desperately to build up savings so that it would never happen again.
[72]
Splitting sales from manufacturing, and spinning out the parts makers
In April 1950 Toyota made its sales arm independent as Toyota Motor Sales[73], severing at the institutional level the state in which manufacturing money and sales money were mixed together. Kamiya Shotaro (神谷正太郎) became president of the sales company[74]. In May the same year the spinning business was transferred to Minsei Boseki, today Toyota Boshoku[75]. Dividing production and sales into separate companies was a choice made at the price of a broken cash position[76]. The separation lasted thirty-two years, until the two were merged again in 1982. The sales company took charge of the national dealer network while the manufacturing side answered for cost and quality[77], and the two raised their funds separately[78].
Under the 1949 corporate reconstruction and reorganisation plan, Toyota separated three plants — the electrical equipment works, the Kariya south works and the Nakagawa works — as second companies standing on their own[79]. Nippondenso, today Denso, established that December[80], was forbidden to use the Toyota name and required to repay $388,889 (¥140m) of debt[81]: harsh terms on which to set out. Its first president, Hayashi Torao (林虎雄), recalled being warned sternly by Kiichiro that damaging the credit of the group would not be tolerated[82]. In June 1949 Aichi Kogyo, now Aisin, and Nagoya Rubber, now Toyoda Gosei, were established[83]. The structure in which a finished-vehicle maker and specialised parts makers divide the work between them was formed in this period[84].
The Korean War, which broke out in June 1950, brought large orders for trucks for the American forces and gave Toyota’s recovery a push[85]. In the same period Kamiya Shotaro, president of Toyota Motor Sales, carried negotiations with Ford over a technical tie-up to the very edge of signature, but the Korean War brought a US government travel ban that made it impossible to send engineers, and the talks came to nothing[86]. Ford agreed instead to accept trainees from Toyota, and from July 1950 Eiji, then managing director, spent about six weeks studying at the River Rouge plant and elsewhere[87]. Back in Japan, Eiji acknowledged the sheer scale of Ford but concluded that there was nothing Ford was doing that Toyota did not already know about.
[88] The policy of assembling volume-production technology by its own efforts, rather than through a partnership, was settled by that finding[89].
The production system, the Crown, and the Motomachi plant
The just-in-time thinking that wartime conditions had stopped from taking root was revived after the war, in the hands of Ohno Taiichi (大野耐一), who had also come from Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, as kanban[90]. The mechanism by which a downstream process tells an upstream one how many it needs grew into the Toyota Production System, built around standardisation and improvement on the shop floor[91]. In May 1951 a creative-suggestion scheme inviting improvement ideas from ordinary employees began[92]. Suggestions ran to 789 with 8 per cent taking part in the 1951 financial year; by the 1965 financial year the figures had grown to 15,968 suggestions and 30 per cent participation[93]. It was the shortage of money for capital equipment that made raising productivity through shop-floor ingenuity the method of choice[94].
In 1955 Toyota launched the first-generation Crown and the Toyopet Master, its first serious passenger cars[95], and so entered the passenger-car market. The Crown had independent front suspension and was a passenger car designed entirely with domestic technology[96]. Demand at the time, however, centred on taxi operators and the wealthy, and monthly sales stayed at around 2,000 units[97]. In March 1956 Toyota Motor Sales put industrial vehicles on the market[98], and in October 1957 Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. was established, placing the window for exports to America inside the United States[99]. The small Crowns exported that year lacked the performance for high-speed driving and were not accepted by the American market[100]. No Japanese maker yet had a plant dedicated to producing passenger cars in volume[101].
Eiji, then executive vice-president, proposed a passenger-car plant sized for 10,000 units a month; president Ishida Taizo, judging the scale too large for the time, decided to build for 5,000 a month[102]. In July 1958 an in-house committee for the construction of a dedicated passenger-car plant was set up, chaired by Toyoda Shoichiro (豊田章一郎)[103]. The judgement handed down was to hold the equipment to 5,000 units a month while designing the buildings alone on a scale that would take 10,000 in future[104]. The Motomachi plant was completed in August 1959, eleven months after ground was broken[105], and an opening ceremony was held over 18 and 19 September. A line-off ceremony was held alongside it for a Crown Deluxe, the 500,000th vehicle Toyota had built since its founding[106]. Ishida, giving the address, placed Motomachi at about 20 per cent complete
and called for growth to not five times the number of units, but five times the substance.
[107] In December that year Motomachi reached the 10,000 units a month it had been aiming at[108].
Notes
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.1 (Toyoda Sakichi’s inventions and thinking)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.1 (Toyoda Sakichi’s inventions and thinking)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.1 (Toyoda Sakichi’s inventions and thinking)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.1 (Toyoda Sakichi’s inventions and thinking)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.3 (Toyoda Kiichiro’s development of the automatic loom)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.3 (Toyoda Kiichiro’s development of the automatic loom)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.4 (the founding of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.4 (the founding of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.3 (Toyoda Kiichiro’s development of the automatic loom)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.1 sec.3 (Toyoda Kiichiro’s development of the automatic loom)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.2 (automobile prototyping)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.2 (automobile prototyping)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.2 (automobile prototyping)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.2 (automobile prototyping)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.3 (research and development of fundamental technology)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.3 (research and development of fundamental technology)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.3 (research and development of fundamental technology)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.3 (research and development of fundamental technology)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Nikkei Business, 25 April 1977 — Toyoda Eiji, president of Toyota Motor Co., on Toyota-style rationalism↩
- Nikkei Business, 25 April 1977 — Toyoda Eiji, president of Toyota Motor Co., on Toyota-style rationalism↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.6 (post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- 日本電装のあゆみ (The Path of Nippondenso, Nippondenso, 1964)↩
- 日本電装のあゆみ (The Path of Nippondenso, Nippondenso, 1964)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.7 (equipment modernisation)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.7 (equipment modernisation)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.7 (equipment modernisation)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.7 (equipment modernisation)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.7 (equipment modernisation)↩
- Toyota Motor Co., Thirty Years of Toyota Motor (1967)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.9 (preparations for volume production and volume selling)↩
- Toyota Motor, Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, Part 1 ch.2 sec.9 (preparations for volume production and volume selling)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor, annual securities report, corporate-history section↩
- Toyota Motor Co., Thirty Years of Toyota Motor (1967)↩
- Toyota Motor Co., Thirty Years of Toyota Motor (1967)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
- Toyota Motor Co., Thirty Years of Toyota Motor (1967)↩
- Toyota Motor Co., Thirty Years of Toyota Motor (1967)↩
- Toyota Motor Co., Thirty Years of Toyota Motor (1967)↩
- Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, collected in Keizaijin vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987)↩
References & sources
- Toyota Motor Corporation (Thirty Years of Toyota Motor, Toyota Motor Co., 1967).
- Toyota Motor Corporation (Seventy-Five Years of Toyota Motor, 2012), Part 1 chapters 1–2: Toyoda Sakichi’s inventions and his businesses, Toyoda Kiichiro’s loom development, the founding of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, the Japanese car market and the surge in American imports, the prototype programme and the research laboratory, the assembly shop and the Koromo plant, wartime research and production, the post-war reorganisation and the labour dispute, the Ford training visit and equipment modernisation, the Toyopet Crown, and the preparations for volume production and volume selling. Official site
- Toyota Motor Corporation (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section.
- Nihon Keizai Shimbun — Toyoda Eiji, My Personal History, “”, collected in vol.22 (Nikkei Inc., 1987). NDL Digital Collections
- Nikkei Business: 25 Apr 1977, the editor-in-chief interview with Toyoda Eiji on Toyota-style rationalism (no.186, pp.20–23); 20 Sep 2013, Sato Masaaki on the three decisions Toyoda Eiji made, in memoriam.
- Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968), the Toyota Motor Co. entry.
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