What Japanese productivity means for Japanese workers
Socialist Organiser1980sSatoshi Kamata is a leading freelance journalist in Japan and the author of numerous books. Japan in the Passing Lane is his first book to appear in English. It is here reviewed by Alan Thornett.
Transcribed by hand from the printed page.
SATOSHI KAMATA worked for Toyota as a seasonal worker in an assembly plant in Toyota City for six months in the second half of 1972.
His journey to begin work at the plant was the same as my own when I visited a Toyota Assembly Plant in Toyota City last year — by superexpress from Tokyo past Mount Fuji to Nagoya. However, while I travelled the 20 miles from Nagoya to Toyota City on the modern subway system which serves Nagoya and the surrounding district, Kamata entered the Toyota world straight off the superexpress. He describes the journey and his arrival at Toyota this way:
"Finally a big bus with a Toyota logo painted on it arrives. Once inside, we keep silent, even after the bus starts moving. We feel awkward. We drive through downtown Nagoya and then up and down hills surrounded by rice fields."
"When big factory building and company-owned houses appear, we know we are almost there. Finally the bus stops in front of a four storey concrete building behind a chain link fence. It is already dark. On the building is a sign which says 'Sacred Heart and Pleasant Breeze Dormitory'. This seems to be our new home. No building less suits its name; it looks more like a prison camp. There's even a guard house at the gate . . . a guard yells at Kudo (who had become his friend since they met at the interview in Tokyo) for smoking a cigarette."
Kamata is not a worker and did not go to Toyota because he needed a job. He is a left wing journalist who went there in order to write about it. Whilst he is a socialist he was in no way a militant while at Toyota, in fact managers regarded him as a model worker and tried to persuade him to stay on at the end of his contract.
He writes from a pro-worker and more or less class standpoint. He sets out to show the "inhumanity of it all" and views things mainly from the effects of Toyota on the individual. His daily diary — of which the bulk of the book comprises — nevertheless does it very well:
"Thursday September 14. Like yesterday, the orientation starts at 8.30. Today we learn the important rules:
Work regulation.
1) Don't divulge secrets learned during work.
2) Try hard to increase efficiency and productivity.
3) Follow instructions concerning your duties.
Conditions of discharge.
1) If the employee is no longer needed.
2) If the employee has physical problems.
3) If the employee is absent from work for more than 20 days because of an accident outside his work.
4) If the employee is absent for more than 15 days for personal reasons.
5) If the employee is absent for more than four days straight without reporting.
Monday September 18. (His first day on the production line).
Almost as soon as I begin, I am dripping with sweat. Somehow, I learn the order of the work motions, but I am totally unable to keep up with the speed of the line. My work gloves make it difficult to grab as many of the tiny bolts I need, and how many precious seconds do I waste doing just that? I do my best, but I can barely finish one gear box in three within the fixed length of time. I'm thirsty as hell, but workers can neither smoke nor drink water. Going to the toilet is out of the question. Who could have invented a system like this?
Friday September 22 (His first day without help).
I'm tired. I don't believe anybody could be more tired. Is this what "labour intensive" means? I never imagined there was labour so "intense" that you couldn't even rest for one second. What kind of labour is this? Toyota has designed this job so that a worker can only keep up with the line by always exerting the utmost effort at top speed . . . it's as if you are tied to the conveyor, exhausted and gasping for breath.
Sunday October 1.
I've been working for two weeks now. When I come back from work, I do nothing but sleep. I try not to think about the job; even then thought of it is enough to make me feel sick. I still fall behind at work. As soon as I push the alarm button my team chief runs up to me and asks in a disgusted tone, 'Haven't you learned yet?'
Thursday October 3.
I'm so worn out I feel numb all over. As soon as I return to the dorm I spread out my bedding, lie down, read a newspaper, but I can't stop myself from falling asleep. I wake up an hour later and go to the bath where I massage my wrists and fingers.
Thursday 12.
I've survived another day. It's 1.30 am. I just got a real shock when I saw my face in the mirror. Dry skin and dull, bloodshot eyes — it looked inhuman, the face of a loser who pities himself and secretly hates himself for doing so. Something in me is breaking."
Kamata brings out the harsh realities of the working conditions very well. The necessity to work before the shift and during break time, unwrapping or preparing components in order to keep up. A system which has no relief workers at all, even for sickness. Where managers study the bio-rhythm of the workers and use it to explain, and blame the workers for accidents. Where living conditions are such that supervisors have access to private apartments and workers are disciplined if they are caught with a girlfriend in their dormitory (there are no women production workers, of course).
The realities of capitalist exploitation Kamata describes are very well done. But if they are to be taken as any kind of precisely valid yardstick to compare current Japanese levels of exploitation to European or American levels they have to be seen in context.
Vehicle production throughout the capitalist world is a ruthless operation. The fact that BL sat out a 4½ week strike recently over 3 minutes washing up time says it all. A journalist going onto a track in Cowley would find it a traumatic and "inhuman" experience — as indeed it is.
Kamata's account, however, is completely valid in general terms. There is a substantial difference in work effort to which I can testify. I judged the work effort I was able to observe as well in excess of 50% more than British standards.
Damage
One very good description of the working conditions he gives is of the conditions of a friend he visited in another part of the plant. It reminded me of the appallingly damaging conditions and incredible work effort I witnessed in the engine plant I visited:
"Kudo races around inside his small work space, joining a driving shaft, turning it in the balancing machine, welding on small metal pieces to correct its weight, marking it, putting on oil and paint, lifting it and hanging it on the trolley conveyor. The last time I visited him he looked at me and happily explained his work. He also had time to introduce me to the worker next to him.
Today he is moving things twice as fast as before and can't stop running. I try to lift a shaft and can barely do it with both hands. Kudo, shorter than I, has to lift it higher than his eyes to hang it on the conveyor. Nine hundred shafts a day. I don't feel right to talk to him, and it doesn't seem polite to watch him work, so I leave. Without exaggeration I must say he is doing the work of three people. I have never seen such quick motions. Kudo will come back after eight tomorrow morning, exhausted and pale, and will fall on an unmade bed without taking a bath. It's not surprising that he does nothing but sleep on Saturdays and Sundays."
The insight Kamata gives us into these conditions is very important. There is however another very important issue, and that is how do Japanese employers achieve these levels of exploitation? On this crucial question Kamata tells us little. He does however pose the problem.
"Why does everyone work at this goddamn job without complaining? Incredibly, thirty minutes before the second shift, everyone is always ready. They change clothes unhurriedly, begin preparing the parts they'll use in their work, and five minutes before their own shift they're already working with the guys on the other shift. They're so docile and undoubting that I could almost cry."
"They're so quiet and look so beaten. Hardly a single one exhibits a striking personality or even a defiant look."
That Kamata attempts no explanation of this leaves his account begging the main question. It is also not a complete account. He makes no mention, for example, of the numerically small but strong and determined group of militants who struggle in Toyota under very difficult conditions. I have met militants who were active in Toyota in that period.
More important he says nothing of the trade unions — except to observe from time to time that they are useless. The problem is that is not the point about unions in the Japanese car industry. The point is that they are yellow. They are employer-created unions, incorporated into the company structures. In Toyota they are so controlled by management that Toyota can switch their personnel at will from management jobs to union jobs as part of their careers structure.
It is the combination of this and the success of Japanese capitalism itself and the success of other techniques of the Japanese employers like QC circles (or 'worker participation') which has created these conditions in the Japanese working class.
There is an explanation in the book of how these levels of exploitation are achieved, but not a very useful one. That is given in a lengthy contemporary foreword by Ronald Dore of the Technical Change Centre, London.
He puts a right-wing line which decries Kamata's pro-worker approach and supports fully Japanese management techniques — although possibly with some of the rough edges smoothed off.
He of course sees submissiveness as a good thing, although probably not achievable to that degree amongst Western workers. He sees it of course in sociological terms, as the product of a submissive Japanese character. This is the usual simplistic approach which misses everything.
From this you would think that Japanese workers had always been "submissive". You wouldn't know of the militant, near revolutionary period of the Japanese workers in the immediate post-war period, when powerful independent unions were built.
You wouldn't know that the Japanese employers had to smash these unions and replace them with yellow unions before they could establish the conditions which exist today. You wouldn't know of the Toyota strike in 1950 — although Kamata does mention it.
Despite all this Kamata's book is important. It is published at a time when Japanese management techniques have become a major issue for the trade unions wherever cars are produced.
All manufacturers have their sights firmly set on Japan — like the Ford UK AJ (After Japan) plan. The more workers facing such attacks know about the realities of Japanese methods the better and Kamata's book (although limited and dated as far as techniques are concerned) makes a contribution to that.
[Photo: Japanese workers demonstrate for import controls. But it is not 'national character' that has enabled Japanese bosses to get such high rates of exploitation.]