The gist of your comment is correct, in the sense that a megacorp job in Japan is safer than a job at an American one.
However, the principle of lifetime employment in Japan has been slowly eroded in the past couple of decades. Toyota's employees still enjoy lifetime employment, but most of the manufacturing needed to make a car gets done by Toyota subsidiaries or subcontractors. These employ people on a contract basis, and they can stop renewing the contracts at any time. E.g. while Toyota was bragging about not laying off employees, their subcontractors were slashing jobs. Lots of workers were unemployed; the government kindly invited Brazilian workers to go back to Brazil and not to come back.
By the way, Toyota employees do belong to a union. It wouldn't be easy for Toyota to have a layoff. For comparison, JAL (Japan Airlines) got sued after laying off people, even though it was basically bankrupt.
However, the principle of lifetime employment in Japan has been slowly eroded in the past couple of decades. Toyota's employees still enjoy lifetime employment, but most of the manufacturing needed to make a car gets done by Toyota subsidiaries or subcontractors. These employ people on a contract basis, and they can stop renewing the contracts at any time. E.g. while Toyota was bragging about not laying off employees, their subcontractors were slashing jobs. Lots of workers were unemployed; the government kindly invited Brazilian workers to go back to Brazil and not to come back.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23immigran...
By the way, Toyota employees do belong to a union. It wouldn't be easy for Toyota to have a layoff. For comparison, JAL (Japan Airlines) got sued after laying off people, even though it was basically bankrupt.