… most of the Japanese companies have a high regard for their employee’s competence and do not adopt personnel retrenchment as one of the urgent countermeasures to come out of a business slump. We looked over historical documents about business disciplines and practices from the 17th century to the 19th century, and examined ideas, beliefs, and philosophy advocated in those documents to elucidate the reasons why the Japanese companies assume the human-oriented attitude toward their employees, and then extracted a conclusion that the human-oriented attitude in the Japanese management has its origin in the spirit of Ji-hi, such as the virtue of compassion of the Buddha.