The Importance of Making Things

 Sunday, April 6, 2025

Nagoya, a city of over two million, is the fourth largest city in Japan. 

Today’s trivia question: What are the three largest cities in Japan? 

It is no surprise that many large corporations have offices or headquarters here. So, let’s go find out about one of the most famous Japanese companies.

After riding two stops on the “yellow line” subway, we walked about 15 minutes to reach the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology. 

The Origin Story

The first thing you see after you enter (after the ticket desk) is a bright, spacious, high-ceilinged room. It is almost empty. In the center is a large round sculpture, or perhaps a machine of some kind, that goes all the way up to the ceiling.

Can you guess what it is? I couldn’t.

In 1911 Sakichi Toyoda established an automatic weaving mill, at the site of this museum, to pursue research and development of automatic looms. In 1924 Sakichi perfected the Non-stop Shuttle-change Automatic Loom, Type G. At the time, it was the highest performing automatic loom in the world. A factory for mass production of the automatic looms was soon constructed nearby. The business grew, and the company became the Toyota Group.

Sakichi devoted his life to inventing and innovating around looms, He believed in “The Spirit of Being Studious and Creative” and “The Importance of Making Things,” and these values have become the themes of the museum. The circular loom invented by Sakichi is shown in the picture above and has become the symbol of the museum. You were expecting a car?

The Nagoya region was devastated by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, which clocked in at a magnitude of 7.9 or greater. Subsequent fires wrought additional damage, and there was severe civil unrest after the earthquake. Cars and trucks were brought to Japan to help with rebuilding the infrastructure which had been destroyed. The destruction of transportation infrastructure hampered efforts to recover from the earthquake. Motor vehicles were relatively new at the time and had not been used on such a large scale previously, but now they provided the only means of transportation in many areas where railroads could no longer operate. The Toyoda family took note of their usefulness.

Sakichi’s son, Kiichiro Toyoda, began researching automobiles and materials at Toyoda Automatic Loom Works. This work culminated in the founding of Toyota Motor Company in 1937. 

Automobile Pavilion

The Automobile Pavilion showed us the study, creativity, and hard work that went into the development of the first Toyota automobile. Kiichiro Toyoda dreamed of producing a vehicle completely made in Japan and more affordable than imported vehicles. He hired a team of engineers, designers, and craftsmen to help with this project. They basically had to build a better, cheaper automobile from the ground up.

In 1933 they imported a Chevrolet and took it apart to study each piece. After reverse engineering the car, it was necessary to acquire and perfect skills related to metal-working (casting, forging, and cutting). 

Kiichiro’s team also paid attention to good design, safety, and comfort.

After completing the prototype design, Toyota had to develop production technologies to be able to mass produce the cars at a reasonable cost. They even had to figure out a sales system from scratch.

Toyota has continued to innovate in design and production. They now produce a luxury car (Lexus) in addition to minivans for families and smaller cars for those seeking economy. They are also exploring how to make hybrid cars as efficient as possible.

I especially liked the exhibit showing how robotics are used in present-day manufacturing. Here is a 17-second video:

In addition to manufacturing robots, we saw a robot band.

The band did not actually play, but a single robot played the violin. I heard it from around the corner while I was in the cafeteria. Honestly, I did not think it was wonderful violin playing. It lacked the finesse of a skilled human violinist.

There was a gap in the historical narrative when it came to the world War II years. I got the impression that the factory was bombed and severely damaged. They did mention, in an offhand manner, that the company was unable to make cars in the initial post-war years when the US occupied Japan. During this time, the family realized that there would soon be a great demand for clothing and household goods. At this time, with a background in textile machinery, the Toyoda family started producing home sewing machines. 

However, around 1955, they were able to start making cars again, and it was off to the races. And the sewing machines were used during the production of vehicle upholstery. 

Textile Machinery Pavilion

And this is a good place to segue into the Textile Machinery Pavilion. It was almost as large as the Automobile Pavilion, and much more interesting to me. And it was completely unexpected. 

We were able to join a free English guided tour for the textile machinery, and the tour was excellent. We started by learning about the fundamentals of spinning and weaving technologies. In this museum, the demonstrations all used cotton. Apparently the process is similar for other raw materials, such as wool.

Our guide demonstrated the simple hand-operated spinning wheel and then moved through water power and motor power showing the numerous innovations that increased productivity.

Spinning by hand and with a hand-cranked spinning wheel

With the Garabo Spinning Machine, the output of one person was increased many times over.

Automated spinning

Next we turned to loom technology. We saw an early wooden loom, operated by hand and foot (by our skillful guide).

Toyoda wooden hand loom

An early automatic loom

One of the modern high-speed looms produces fabrics for Japanese towel handkerchiefs

This advanced loom rapidly produces fabric with images taken from photographs

As looms began to be automated, some of Sakichi’s creative improvements, such as a loom that changed shuttles automatically when they were empty, began to show up. Today, the Toyota Group manufactures astonishingly fast air jet looms.

🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  🚘  

A lot of information was thrown at me at this museum, and it has been hard to digest it all and set it down in a coherent, properly sequenced narrative for my blog, so I have taken some time with it. Ken and I spent two days, off and on, discussing various points of interest and various thoughts that were provoked by this museum. I do think that is the job of a museum. 

If I had to express it all in a poster, this one, seen in the museum’s shop, would be perfect.

I should mention that the Noritake Gardens is only a short walk away from the Toyota Museum. As it turned out, we stayed so long at the Toyota Museum that we did not have time to go there and learn about the famous china company. Maybe next time.

Today’s fabric is a multi-colored terrycloth towel handkerchief produced by the machine shown above. In Japan, public restrooms are clean and well-maintained, but they don’t often provide paper towels or air dryers. As a consequence, most people carry around a small hand towel or washcloth to dry their hands with. 

The Four Seasons Road of Yamazaki River

Saturday, April 5, 2025

One hundred years ago someone had the foresight and vision to give a gift of great beauty to the future. Because someone wanted to share the fleeting beauty of a beloved flower with the unknown residents of a future that they would never belong to, they set in motion a plan to plant more than 600 cherry trees along the banks of the Yamazaki River in Nagoya. 

Forty years ago, someone thought to improve on that brilliant plan by adding a path along both sides of the river to improve access for those who came to enjoy the cherry blossoms, called sakura in Japanese. This project came to be known as the Four Seasons Road of Yamazaki River.

Cosplay is a very big thing in Japan, so I decided to cosplay as a tourist today.

Perhaps it was a reaction to the growing industrialization of the early 20th century. I don’t know when the river was channelized, but it could have been around that time. I don’t know if the river was losing its character and its pristine status as civilization tried to reshape it into something we would not describe as a river. I do know that today the river is clear and is full of large, healthy fish and turtles, ducks, kingfishers, and other birds. 

These turtles have cherry blossoms petals stuck to their shells.

I hope these planners imagined that in 2025 thousands of people would come to the Yamazaki River to see the cherry blossoms, to stroll along the pleasant paths, and to experience the joy of being part of something bigger than themselves. 

In fact, the Japanese have a word for this: hanami (flower viewing). The idea of “flower viewing” implies having a party or picnic under the ephemeral blossoms of a cherry tree. 

Eleven seconds of hanami:

Most of the trees survive today as grizzled elders that manage to delight us for maybe two weeks every year with a glorious display of springtime finery. It was such a treat to be here at just the right time this year to enjoy these stately old trees with so many other folks. There is something very powerful about participating in such a lovely and gentle tradition. It makes me think about what can happen when you plant even one tree.

🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸

Our second destination today was the Atsuta Shrine, a Shinto shrine founded in 113 CE to house a legendary sacred sword.

At the entrance to the shrine complex, Ken is dwarfed by a massive torii gate

As soon as we arrived we went to a small, casual ramen restaurant because we were starved. We had delicious bowls of curry and udon soup. There was a hideous black mushroom in my soup, but I tried it and it turned out to be one of the best mushrooms I have ever eaten. The noodles weren’t bad either, but they do make such a mess - don’t ask me how I know that. I thought the dessert I had was very tasty and provided a good cross-section of different Japanese desserts: ice cream with matcha powder, a cookie with a picture of cats on it, another cookie stuffed with anko (red bean paste) similar to taiyaki, and dango (rice dumplings) on red bean sauce.

There are five deities enshrined at Atsuta, but I don’t really know what that means. There was only one sheet of information in English. None of the signage there was in English. I’m not saying they need to provide English signs for me, but I have seen a lot of English at other shrines.

So, we walked around this extensive property without gaining a very good understanding of what we were seeing. The main sanctuary of the shrine was off limits to the public. We were allowed to walk up to the fence around it and look at it from a distance, but no photos were permitted there. 

The other buildings and structures were not particularly impressive, but they do show the typical type of architecture found at Shinto shrines.

I think this is where one of the deities is enshrined

What I did find impressive were the forested parts of the property. There were many very old trees here. They have not been disturbed. In fact, many of them have been protected and honored.

I was also impressed that so many people were visiting the shrine.

The place where you buy amulets, or omamori, was very popular. I don’t have a good sense of how much the Japanese believe in these things. I think many operate on the theory that “it can’t hurt.”  I bought a couple of omamori for souvenirs and gifts because they are cute, and because I wanted to help the shrine, which does not charge an admission fee. 

The one on the left is for safe travels.The swan amulet is for happiness.

It does seem as though many Japanese people observe the Shinto rituals, such as bowing upon entering and leaving the shrine through a torii gate, and performing a ritual handwashing upon arrival. You can often see some sort of life-cycle ceremony taking place, such as a wedding, or something marking a milestone for an infant or child. It is also my understanding that many of these same people engage in Buddhist practices also and it is generally considered to be OK to observe customs of or believe in both religions. We have discussed this a little bit with Terin, but I would like to know more about it, and why, apart from visits to temples and shrines, Japanese culture seems so secular.

Our final stop of the day was buying tickets for upcoming railroad journeys. We went to the ticket office at Nagoya Station to do this. It is an enormous, very busy station. Wikipedia says it is Japan’s largest station. It should be found under the word “sprawling” in the dictionary. 

Now jet lag is catching up with us, so we are going back to our hotel to have a little downtime - an important part of every vacation.

Today’s fabric is Sakura and Hokusai Waves of Medieval Japan by igor_vasiliadis on Spoonflower.