The rise of 'made-in-Japan' Chinese herbal remedies

The rise of 'made-in-Japan' Chinese herbal remedies

TOKYO -- With the market for traditional Chinese herbal medicines going from strength to strength, Japanese makers of the remedies are increasingly starting to source raw ingredients at home, rather than importing them from China. 

An hour and a half by car from Kagoshima Airport in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, lies a great swathe of grass that turns bright yellow in September as the field's crop comes into bloom. Bupleurum, as the plant is known, is used in remedies for everything from the common cold to symptoms of dementia.

A local farmers' partnership in the town of Asagiri produces around 20 tons of the crop annually in the 64-hectare field, providing them to Tsumura, Japan's largest producer of traditional Chinese medicine.

One member, Toru Furuyama, said he had "turned to bupleurum as tea-leaf prices began falling." Another, Naoki Minakoshi, pointed out that many medicinal herbs did not require large upfront costs, such as for building greenhouses.

Tsumura controls more than 80% of the herbal medicine market in Japan and buys thousands of tons of ingredients every year -- about 80% from China and 15% at home.

The drugmaker is now trying to expand its domestic procurement network. The amount of Japanese herbs it buys increased some 40% between fiscal 2006 and 2016, although the percentage as a part of total procurement has stayed roughly the same. About a quarter of the 120 or so herbal

 ingredients the company uses are grown domestically.

As part of the drive, Tsumura has been trying to assist contract farmers by providing rental machinery and guidance on growing medicinal herbs.

Company staff visit farms several times a year to check on progress and give practical advice on issues such as optimal harvest times. "I want our contract farmers to be highly aware that their crops are used for medical products," said Kohei Takabayashi from Tsumura.   

The company's push for more homegrown herbs was prompted by a steady rise in demand for Chinese herbal medicines in Japan's aging society.

Ryuta Fujii, president of Ryukakusan, a drugmaker with more than a century of history, is keen to take advantage of the brand value of "made-in-Japan" products. 

The company, which is famous for sore throat and cough remedies, is currently shifting from a reliance on bellflowers imported from China to ones grown in Akita Prefecture, northeastern Japan, for its Ryukakusan Direct medicine.

Fujii also said the company was increasingly receiving inquiries from herbal medicine makers in Hong Kong about Japanese-grown ingredients.

Ryukakusan has collaborated with the Tokyo Crude Drugs Association by sending specialists to contract farms to help raise yields. One idea provided was to use vegetable-peeling machinery for bellflower processing, bringing down the workload for farmers who had been peeling the plant by hand.

Japanese drugmakers have even established a reputation for Chinese herbal remedies in their land of origin. Many Chinese consumers are said to have misgivings over the reliability of homegrown remedies and buy up Japanese products when they visit.

It is not uncommon for tourist guidebooks to contain information about Japanese herbal medicines and there is plenty more available online. The country's drugmakers are keen to push fully Japanese products to Chinese shoppers.

At the same time, the price of medicinal herbs, like many other goods, has been rising in China at a much faster pace than in Japan.

According to industry body the Japan Kampo Medicines Manufacturers Association, or JKMA, the average price of Japanese medicinal herbs rose from 2,494 yen ($22) per kilogram in fiscal 2006 to 3,019 yen in fiscal 2016. Over the same period, the price for Chinese herbs more than doubled to 1,570 yen, from 690 yen.

Chinese ingredients may still be cheaper, but Japanese drugmakers remain determined to shift reliance to homegrown herbs. 

Takeda Consumer Healthcare, a subsidiary of Takeda Pharmaceutical, is seeking ways to reduce the costs of domestic herb production in areas such as cultivation control and distribution, with the eventual goal of making Japanese herbs as affordable as those from China. 

Takeda Consumer has worked on the cultivation of medical rhubarb since 1956, when it was still part of the parent company. It began growing Shinshu Daio, its own hybrid of the plant, in Hokkaido in 1969.

The rising prices of medicinal herbs in China hint at growth in demand outpacing that of supply. An executive from a Japanese herbal drugmaker warned that there could be serious shortages of Chinese herbs in just 10 years' time.

Buyers in China are increasingly looking to secure ingredients before overseas players. To avoid excessive price hikes, Beijing could impose restrictions on exports -- in the worst-case scenario for Japanese producers, they would be unable to import medical herbs from China.

Overall, however, the future looks bright for the industry in Japan. The country's market for herbal remedies stood at 148.1 billion yen for fiscal 2016, a 56% rise over 10 years, based on official drug pricing, according to IMS Japan in Tokyo.

It is not only the growing numbers of elderly Japanese that are keen on the products, an increasingly health-conscious younger generation is also starting to favor herbal remedies.

Kracie Holdings last year began advertising some of its herbal remedies in women's lifestyle magazine an-an and collaborated on package designs of certain products.

Herb growers, for their part, can expect stable sales. The JKMA and Japan's agriculture ministry in fiscal 2013 began organizing events bringing together farmers who are interested in growing medicinal herbs and potential partner businesses.

As AG Ken Paxton fights judge, can Texas foster kids go two years without her remedies?

Even if the 5th Circuit peels back those particular demands by Jack, the state will not have suffered "irreparable harm," plaintiffs' lawyers wrote. It merely could reduce some of the extra spending, they said.

The plaintiffs' lawyers noted that Jack has followed guideposts set out in Ruiz vs. Estelle, the landmark lawsuit over conditions in Texas prisons that began in the 1970s and spanned two more decades. There's a difference between ordering new buildings, such as prisons, which would be costly and irreversible, and simply hiring more employees, such as guards or CPS workers, the plaintiffs' lawyers argued. Employees can be let go, they noted.

One of the two sides' sharpest exchanges in their latest filings was over past performance by Residential Child Care Licensing, a division the Legislature last year broke up and parceled out between Whitman's agency, where it had been, and Smith's mega-agency.

Paxton and Keller said Jack garbled the data in finding "faulty investigations" by the division of alleged abuse and neglect of foster children. She misread a 5-year-old internal study that challenged 84 of 111 cases in which investigators said they were unable to determine whether maltreatment occurred, state lawyers argued. The department found that on 76 of those occasions, the licensing division's investigators should have "affirmatively ruled out" any abuse or neglect, they said.

Yetter, Sara Bartosz of Children's Rights and Marcia Robinson Lowry of A Better Childhood, however, said Jack was right to consider the error rate "staggering" and a sign children aren't protected.

"DFPS kept the investigation-error rate secret from its board," they wrote.

Embarrassed, the department stopped looking at the quality of investigations, they said. For instance, it never reviewed another entire category of decisions — allegations "ruled out" — even though that might have revealed "scores of other faulty investigations," they said.

While Abbott has joined Paxton in criticizing Jack's orders, two leading child advocacy groups have urged the state to reconsider its strategy.

TexProtects-Champions for Safe Children has urged the state "to stop litigating." On Monday, Texans Care for Children's Kate Murphy wrote in her blog that foster kids' needs are so urgent, the state "should take action now rather than waiting for a resolution in the courts."

Are your kids bored? Here’s Don Bosco’s powerful remedy

Educating children, whether it be in the classroom or at home, can be a difficult process. In particular, children can often grow bored of a subject and mentally “clock out,” leaving the teacher frustrated.

To remedy the situation, St. John Bosco, an influential Italian priest of the 19th century, wrote a letter to help his teachers understand what they needed to do.

He related a story in his letter of an old pupil who needed help at his school. The boys were listless, bored and didn’t even enjoy games. His pupil asked, “But how can we bring these youngsters to life again, so that we can get back to the liveliness, the happiness, the warmth of the old days?”

St. John Bosco said plainly, “With charity!”

Surprised, his pupil responded, “With love? … I have done everything I possibly could for them; they are the object of all my affections.”

Don Bosco explained, “[The best thing is missing] That the youngsters should not only be loved, but that they themselves should know that they are loved.”

Still confused, Bosco gave a more lengthy explanation of what he meant.

By being loved in the things they like, through taking part in their youthful interests, they are led to see love in those things which they find less attractive, such as discipline, study and self-denial, and so learn to do these things too with love.

By a friendly informal relationship with the boys, especially in recreation. You cannot have love without this familiarity, and where this is not evident there can be no confidence. If you want to be loved, you must make it clear that you love. Jesus Christ made himself little with the little ones and bore our weaknesses. He is our master in the matter of the friendly approach. The teacher who is seen only in the classroom is a teacher and nothing more; but if he joins in the pupils’ recreation he becomes their brother.

He saw the relationship a teacher had with his/her students as a primary way to combat boredom in other subjects. If the student understands that he is loved by his teacher, then he will be more readily interested in those things that aren’t his favorite activities.

This is one of the pillars of Salesian education, something that has been passed down over the years and has proven to be an effective means of reaching children of all ages.