Calendar

Our company celebrates its centennial this year, and so we have arranged in this yearʼs calendar to introduce something of our hundred-year history.

Nippon Shinyaku is a manufacturer of pharmaceuticals, a field of business not widely associated with Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan for over a thousand years and still today widely regarded as the capital of traditional Japanese culture. The reason that Kyoto is our home is something that we would like to share. Our history actually begins in 1911, when our founder, a pharmacist named Ichinose, set up his own company named Kyoto Shinyakudo, or the “Kyoto New Pharmaceuticals Firm.” His connections with one of Japan’s leading medical research institutions then and now, Kyoto University (then known as Kyoto Imperial University), set the foundation for the success of his firm. In the world at large, World War I had broken out, and this led to a demand in war-affected areas outside Japan for supplies from Japan. In answer, Kyoto Shinyakudo manufactured and sold a variety of medicines developed at the Kyoto Imperial University. In 1919, Ichinose collaborated with key figures in Kyotoʼs financial sector, and established Nippon Shinyaku Co., Ltd. Its headquarters and manufacturing plant were set up at a site west of downtown Kyoto today. Our company ever since has been involved in its own meticulous research and development of pharmaceuticals. We focused on developing an anthelmintic (remedy for intestinal worms) produced from a local strain of mugwort known as Mibuyomogi, and in 1934 we patented the process for producing an anthelmintic from it and founded a pilot farm in the Yamashina area for improving this strain of mugwort. In 1940, we came out with Japan’s first domestically produced anthelmintic, Santonin, our original product. We became listed on the Kyoto Stock Exchange in 1949, in 1953 we reestablished our Yamashina pilot farm and turned it into what is now our Yamashina Botanical Research Institute, and in 1957, relocated our headquarters to its current address. In 1961, we expanded our line of products to include foods, and soon completed construction on the original building of our Discovery Research Laboratories. We became listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1962. In 1991, we opened our first overseas office, which was in Dusseldorf, Germany, and which in 2012 we relocated to London. In 1999, we founded our subsidiary in the USA, NS Pharma, Inc., through which, in 2016, we launched another of our major products, the pulmonary arterial hypertension agent, Uptravi.

Being homed in Kyoto, we have felt that it is an important mission of ours to maintain the culture here, which, slowly through the decades, seems to be eroding and slipping away. As an important part of our company’s activities, this desire has propelled us to devote considerable attention to cultural initiatives. Among them is our Kyoto-focused calendar, featuring original artwork which we source out to local artists in the field of dyeing, a field of art deeply rooted in Kyoto for its basis in the kimono industry, which long was among Kyoto’s chief industries.

Our hundred year history places us among the enterprises here which have withstood the test of time, something of a feat. One century is not long, however, considering that there exist in this city quite a few shops and professional lines which have been around for a great many generations. While our company is a relatively new enterprise in the whole scope of this, and has been engaged in frontline scientific and technological work, we are keenly aware of the value of tradition, and have striven to build up a tradition of our own. On the occasion of our centennial celebration, we wanted to prepare a calendar to commemorate this milestone of ours, and in keeping with our calendar style over the last sixty years, we designed it to introduce some of the historical places in our environment, and got scenes of them made into original artworks by dyeing artists of Kyoto, as usual. The theme of our 2019 calendar definitely is unique, as it centers on the history of our company. Even so, we hope that you enjoy it, and that it helps us to keep the old traditions and culture of Kyoto alive in this fast-changing world.

For January-February, we chose Mibudera, a Buddhist Ritsu Sect temple in the neighborhood of our original headquarters and plant. It is on Shijodori, the east-west street which cuts across the central downtown area. Mibuderaʼs old entrance gate is easy to pass by unnoticed, belying the temple’s amazing history and customs. Mibudera is dedicated to the guardian deity of longevity, Enmei Jizo, and dates its origin to the year 991. Many other guardian deities (Jizo) are worshipped here, as well. Most famous, however, are the pantomime plays performed during the Nenbutsu-e religious gathering held in the spring, and also in the autumn. The entertaining pantomime plays, known as Mibu Kyogen, have a history of over a millennium, and originated as tools to teach Buddhism to the common people. It is largely due to the dedicated efforts of the generations of performers who now practice under the umbrella of their Mibu Kyogen Preservation Guild, that this intangible cultural art has stayed alive.

The March-April page shows Kisshoin Tenmangu, in the neighborhood of our headquarters today, nearby JR Kyoto Station. The word “Tenmangu” indicates that it is a Shinto shrine dedicated to the Heian period aristocrat and scholar, Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), deified as Tenjin (the heavenly deity). Amid the competitive world of the Imperial Court in the Heian Capital (capital of peace; the name by which Kyoto was known in its original days as the seat of the emperor), Michizane exhibited outstanding talent and rose to high positions. But a jealous rival had him labelled as a traitor and sent into exile, where he alas died. Great tragedies befell the Emperor and the Heian Capital after his death, and these were attributed to Michizane’s wrath. To appease his spirit, the Emperor deified him and established a shrine at Kitano in Kyoto, to make prayers to him, wishing for the tempests to disappear, and also honoring the scholarly achievements of the wronged Michizane. In time, a widespread “Faith in the Tenjin” movement arose, and many Tenmangu shrines were established throughout the land. Twenty-five, including the one at Kisshoin, were established in Kyoto.

The May-June page features Nagaoka Tenmangu, near our dormitory and company housing for employees in the quiet residential area called Nagaoka. The shrine legend has it that Nagaoka was where Michizane had his estate, and when he left Kyoto to his place of exile, he made a last visit and declared that his spirit would always reside here. Centuries later, the property moved into the hands of an Imperial Prince, who had it beautified. The myriad nicely maintained Kirishima Tsutsuji azalea bushes are a stunning sight when they are at their height of bloom in the late spring.

For the July-August page, we chose the Ipponbashi bridge which crosses the Shirakawa stream where it flows through the Furukawamachi area of downtown Kyoto. This site takes us back to the origin of our company, when our founder established the Kyoto Shinyakudo at this location. The stream has its source at Mount Hiei, the tallest peak in the Higashiyama mountain range that hugs the eastern border of the city. Its water appears crystal clear above the white sand that naturally covers the stream bed. Not far from where the stream meets the Kamogawa River, there is this narrow stone bridge, a mere sixty centimeters in width, enabling pedestrians to cross to the other side. Until just three years ago, the original Kyoto Shinyakudo building still stood very close to this bridge.

On the September-October page, we see Matsuo Taisha, our company’s tutelary shrine, located near the western end of Shijodori, that street we came across on our January-February page. As Shintoism is Japan’s indigenous religion, a number of the Shinto shrines of Kyoto have earlier histories than any of this old capital’s hundreds of Buddhist temples. Matsuo Taisha is one of them. A clan called the Hata established it prior to the emperor’s creation of his new Heian Capital in the Kyoto basin. It enshrines Oyamakui, deity of rice and saké. Rice cultivation and the production of rice wine, saké, depend upon abundant good water. At Matsuo in the hills bordering the Kyoto basin on the west, there has existed a waterfall which the ancient Hata clan knew of, the Waterfall of the Tortoise Spirit (tortoise being the legendary water animal of longevity), and a spring, the Tortoise Well. Because of these, Matsuo became a sacred place. According to the shrine legend, the original shrine building was built in 701.

The November-December page shows the imperial temple Zuishin’in, in the somewhat removed area called Yamashina, where our company set up its pilot farm in 1934. It is in the direct vicinity of the neighborhood called Ono, where the Ono family of the Heian days resided, and which was home to the legendary beauty and poetess, Ono no Komachi (ca. 825–900). Zuishin’in was originally built in 991 and had the name Mandaraji, but was destroyed during the wars which ravaged the country in the middle ages. Its main hall was rebuilt in 1599, and the temple later was the residence of imperial family members who had become tonsured priests.

The temple still today is closely tied to the legend of Ono no Komachi.

If you have missed our recent calendars, you may like to take a look at them in the KYO-Gallery section of the English side of our Nippon Shinyaku Co., Ltd. website.

Gretchen Mittwer