The international medical community could benefit from the wide range of therapeutic options that traditional Japanese Kampo medicine can offer. Its integration into modern medicine has already been realized in Japan (Nature 480, S96; 2011), where it is available as a 5-year specialization for physicians already trained in Western medicine.

Kampo and traditional Chinese medicine have common roots, but Kampo uses additional diagnostic techniques and more rigorously controls the quality of herbal preparations.

It would be a major loss for both Western and traditional medicines if political or financial factors were to cause the “sun to set” on Kampo.