The local auto plant in fictional Hadleyville, Pennsylvania, which supplied most of the town's jobs, has been closed for nine months. The former foreman Hunt Stevenson goes to Tokyo to try to convince the Assan Motors Corporation to reopen the plant. The Japanese company agrees and, upon their arrival in the U.S., they take advantage of the desperate work force to institute many changes. The workers are not permitted a union, are paid lower wages, are moved around within the factory so that each worker learns every job, and are held to seemingly impossible standards of efficiency and quality. Adding to the strain in the relationship, the Americans find humor in the demand that they do calisthenics as a group each morning and that the Japanese executives eat their lunches with chopsticks and bathe together in the river near the factory. The workers also display a poor work ethic and lackadaisical attitude toward quality control. The Japanese executive in charge of the plant is Takahara "Kaz" Kazuhiro, who has been a failure in his career thus far because he is too lenient on his workers. When Hunt first meets Kaz in Japan, the latter is being ridiculed by his peers and being required to wear ribbons of shame. He has been given one final chance to redeem himself by making the American plant a success. Intent on becoming the strict manager his superiors expect, he gives Hunt a large promotion on the condition that he work as a liaison between the Japanese management and the American workers, to smooth the transition and convince the workers to obey the new rules. More concerned with keeping his promotion than with the welfare of his fellow workers, Hunt does everything he can to trick the American workers into compliance, but the culture clash becomes too great and he begins to lose control of the men. In an attempt to solve the problem, Hunt makes a deal with Kaz: if the plant can produce 15,000 cars in one month, thereby making it as productive as the best Japanese