The Wakan-yaku Universe: A Useful Authorized Traditional Concept for Developing Novel Therapeutic Categories and Medicinal Drugs.

This review article mentions about the following points, and proposes its importance and positive thinking. 1) Wakan-yaku (Japanese oriental medicines) is covered by the national health insurance system in Japan as therapeutic drugs to be actively used in medical practice to treat illness. 2) Applications of Wakan-yaku is accomplished based on the reliable own theories which are established with long histories. 3) Promotion of studies based on these theories will be highly expected to find novel view points which breaks conventional concepts and to novel standards for developing new medicinal drugs. Although studies based on the reliable Wakan-yaku theories are not advancing satisfactorily till now, the possibilities to obtain the advanced resources for drugs and novel viewpoints for experiments by studies about Wakan-yaku theories are discussed in this review.