Japanese Kampo

Kampo prescribes standardised multi-herb formulas rather than single herbs, and each formula is matched to a pattern of symptoms rather than to a disease name. The formulas our articles examine are concrete: Kikyo-to for a sore throat at the start of an infection, Shakuyakukanzoto for muscle cramp, Keishikashakuyakuto for abdominal pain, Hachimijiogan for age-related complaints. Alongside the formulas sits a second and quite different literature — daily regimen. Kaibara Ekiken's Yōjōkun of 1713 is a household manual on how to eat, sleep, bathe and move, and it is the source we cite most often.

We can answer that narrowly, with our own numbers. Across twenty-five Kampo claims we checked against the primary sources and the research: three were confirmed, six had partial support, four were refuted, and twelve had never been tested at all. The largest group is the untested one, and that is the honest headline — not that Kampo fails, but that most of what it says has never been put to the question. Those twenty-five are a sample shaped by our own topics, mostly sleep, digestion and longevity, so they are not a verdict on the tradition as a whole.

It began from Chinese texts and then went its own way. Kampo inherited the Shang Han Lun and the Jin Gui Yao Lue, and several of its formulas descend directly from Chinese ones — Kikyo-to comes from the classical Jie Geng Tang. What it added is its own regimen literature and its own hands-on discipline. The Yōjōkun argues positions the Chinese classics do not: that hot bathing is harmful, that a lamp must not burn beside a sleeper, that one should stop eating at eight or nine parts out of ten. And Japan codified its own massage, Anma, taught from Edo-period manuals and licensed by the Japanese state separately from imported Western massage.