The Leaning Factories 271
who was a frail and sickly boy. No one thought he had
the physical capacity to become a leader. Sakichi knew he
could let his son take over the loom business, but he also
knew that cars would be the next big thing. “Everyone
should tackle some great project at least once in their life,”
Sakichi told his son. “I devoted most of my life to inventing
new kinds of looms. Now it is your turn. You should make
an effort to complete something that will benefit society.”
To learn how to build cars, Kiichiro studied mechanical
engineering at the Tokyo Imperial University.^2
In 1933, Kiichiro founded Toyota Motor Company as a
division of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. The company
changed its name from Toyoda to Toyota because they
wanted to expand to English speaking countries. After a
competition, they decided to choose Toyota because the
name worked better in Japanese and English, and because
they thought the eight strokes to write Toyota in Japanese
would bring luck and prosperity^406
After the Second World War, Japan needed to rebuild
their bombed cities, so there was a high demand for cars
and trucks. But Toyota would still be close to bankruptcy.
The high inflation made money worthless and it was
difficult to be paid by their customers. To avoid bankruptcy,
they cut the salaries with ten percent and 1 600 employees
had to retire voluntarily. It saved the company.^2
In the 1950s, Toyota knew their factory needed to
become more productive. After a twelve week long journey
through American factories, they saw that Ford’s factories
were ten times as productive. On the other hand, they