Japanese automakers add plants and jobs

"We don't start out with the idea that we need plants in Japan," Shiga said. "Each plant taking up the challenge leads to Nissan's overall competitiveness."

Kazuo Aoki, general manager at the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers, an organization that promotes technology, said the fundamentals of ensuring quality are based in Japan, which boasts top-notch parts suppliers and steelmakers.

"It's still best to produce domestically those cars with extra value," Aoki said. "But what you want to avoid is friction with nations, where the cars get exported."

In the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese automakers busily set up plants abroad, including North America, to cut costs and blunt the "Japan-bashing" among some Americans who blamed them for the loss of U.S. jobs.

Some U.S. legislators have revived complaints about Japan's success at the expense of American manufacturers. United States Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., who represents thousands of Detroit-based auto workers, has said that the Japanese have an unfair edge from a weak yen, which makes it easier to underprice American rivals.

Such complaints have struck a sensitive nerve for some Americans worried about the fates of U.S. auto companies, which are slashing jobs and shuttering plants.

General Motors Corp. lost $10.4 billion in 2005 but underwent massive restructuring and trimmed its losses to $2 billion in 2006. Ford Motor Co. lost $12.7 billion last year, while DaimlerChrysler has decided to put up money-losing Chrysler for sale.

Toyota is steadily encroaching on their home turf. Autodata Corp.'s figures for March gave Toyota a 16 percent of the U.S. market, behind GM, with 22 percent, and Ford, with 17 percent.

Toyota is now exporting nearly half the vehicles it sells from Japan. Last year, that percentage was 46 percent, up from about 38 percent in 2005 because of a surge in U.S. demand and the inability of U.S. factories to keep up with demand.

One of Toyota's hot cars, the Prius hybrid, which switches between a gasoline engine and an electric motor to deliver as much as 60 miles per gallon, is made only in Japan.

Analysts say the recent production boom in Japan is also a reflection of how Japanese automakers have dispersed production — small cars and high-end models in Japan, pickup trucks in Thailand, and bigger trucks in the U.S. — so strong local demand, labor costs, tax laws and other factors make that place the best choice.

The Japanese have much at stake in maintaining the legacy of quality production methods and management philosophies in Japan, said Anand Sharma, manufacturing expert and co-founder of TBM Consulting Group.

"They have to keep that spirit alive, and they have to have some of that production there so that spirit doesn't fade away," Sharma said.

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