Herbal Drugs in Traditional Japanese Medicine

Western medicine often regards patients as sets of individual organs, and illnesses are often at‐ tributed to pathogens or morbid organs that should be removed. However, Asian traditional medicine, including TJM and TCM, understand patients from a holistic perspective that em‐ phasizes the importance of balancing and harmonizing the entire patient, including her or his mind and body. Asian forms of medicine explain changes in symptoms in terms of causes, and treatments are prescribed based on a view of diseases as dynamic processes [1,2].