In this book I did not want to focus only on my clients’ business issues, challenges, the problems they need to solve, and how we helped them. I hope some readers, including Japanese readers, will be interested in some of the human and social context issues surrounding this. This first-half description of today’s human and economic environment, and the problems and challenges of modern day life Japan, leads into a second half of this part that mostly focuses on how to effectively handle staff reductions at companies. There is also a description of some flawed downsizing approaches. Virtually all smaller Japanese companies, and their thoughtful managers and unions, are too smart to make these costly and devastating mistakes. They also cannot afford them, and have no way to get their hands on the large sums of money necessary for these very rare, and extremely rich extra, kibotaishoku/voluntary retirement programs. At these smaller employers, from the beginning, there is no attractive severance package available, so there is no incentive for strong performers to voluntarily leave. Instead the emphasis is on keeping the best crew members, and dumping the unnecessary cargo to maintain job security for as many employees as possible. Only a comparatively small number of the largest, cushy Japanese employers, and a few foreign capitalized firms, have access to the cash, or are able to borrow the cash for large severance pay outs. Even such costly, strategically poor staff reductions, where high performing, needed people are the first to resign, may result in short run profitability, however, the company and its manpower are unnecessarily weakened. The firm’s vitality and potential are damaged. The damage has been beyond repair in many foreign capitalized firms, that only knew about, or who felt they had to use the strategically poor approach.