On April 1, under cherry blossoms in full bloom at Toyota City headquarters, Kenta Kon addressed 2,317 new employees as the company’s 13th president — his first act on his first day in the job. The ceremony was loaded with symbolism, some of it subtle, most of it not.
Flanking the stage were a reconstructed 1890 Toyoda Wooden Hand Loom, the Century luxury sedan unveiled at last year’s Japan Mobility Show, and the GR GT3 prototype sports car. Past, present, and future, all within arm’s reach. It was the first time since 2019 — when a red Supra fired its engine inside the ceremony hall — that vehicles had been rolled out for the occasion.
Kon’s message was simple, almost disarmingly so: work for someone other than yourself. He traced that ethic back to Sakichi Toyoda, who invented the automatic loom not to build an empire but to ease the burden on his mother, weaving late into the night. That origin story has become Toyota’s foundational myth, and Kon leaned into it hard.
“That spirit of working for someone other than yourself has not changed over the past 100 years,” Kon told the assembled new hires. It is the most important value that Toyota must continue to carry forward.”
The timing is deliberate. 2026 marks the centennial of Toyota Industries, the corporate seedbed from which the automaker grew. Kon used the anniversary not as a victory lap but as a framing device — a way to argue that inheritance demands evolution, not preservation.
He invoked Kiichiro Toyoda, who launched the car business when Japan had neither the capital nor the technology to compete. Kiichiro insisted that Japanese ideas and skills had to create a Japanese automobile industry. That scrappy underdog narrative still resonates inside Toyota, even as the company sits atop global sales charts.
Then came the Century. Kon connected the luxury nameplate to its origins under Kenya Nakamura, Toyota’s first chief engineer, and a young Shoichiro Toyoda. He played a clip of Chairman Akio Toyoda from the Japan Mobility Show, in which Toyoda explained that “Century” represents far more than a car — it is “a commitment to creating the next hundred years” and “a heartfelt wish for world peace.”
For anyone watching the power dynamics inside Toyota, the ceremony was revealing. Akio Toyoda stepped back from the presidency in 2023 but remains chairman and, clearly, the company’s spiritual center. His voice — literally, via video — still dominated the room.
Kon, inheriting a company navigating electrification, regulatory pressure, and intensifying competition from Chinese rivals, chose not to lay out a strategic roadmap. He chose to tell a story about a mother at a loom. That is either deeply refreshing or deeply insufficient, depending on your expectations of a new CEO’s first public remarks.
Toyota has long operated on the belief that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Kon appears to be doubling down on that bet.
The 2,317 new employees represent Toyota’s largest ceremony class since before the pandemic. The company is hiring aggressively even as other automakers trim headcount and restructure around software and batteries. Toyota remains committed to a multi-pathway approach — hybrids, plug-ins, hydrogen, and battery electrics — and staffing up suggests confidence in the volume game.
Kon closed by acknowledging the anxiety his new hires likely felt. “Anxiety means you’re facing it head-on,” he told them. It was the most honest thing anyone said all morning.
A company entering its second century, led by a president on his first day, telling a room full of people on their first day that nervousness is proof you’re paying attention. The cherry blossoms outside were at peak bloom. In Japan, they symbolize both beauty and impermanence — and whether Kon chose the metaphor or nature did, the message landed either way.
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