Historical Research on Cinchona Cultivation in Japan (5) Identification of the Cinchona Wood, the First Cultivated Plant in Japan and its Historical Background

Abstract

We are studying how cinchona, one of the most important medicinal plants, was introduced and cultivated in Japan. We already mentioned that in the process, two cultivation attempts were made: the first in Japan in 1882, and the second in the Taiwanese town of Hengchun in approximately 1900, when Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule. Yasusada Tashiro was behind those two cinchona cultivation attempts; however, they both ended in failure. Later, Tashiro became an employee of Hoshi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. and in 1922, succeeded for the first time in cultivating cinchona at the company-owned cinchona field in Taiwan. This third challenge for him finally led to success. Hoshi Pharmaceutical went on further to produce cinchona bark from the cultivated tree for the first time in 1934, and also succeeded in extracting quinine from the bark. This was a historic feat in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry, completing an entire process from cinchona cultivation to quinine manufacture all within the confines of the country. In this report, we describe the historical background and involvement of Yasusada Tashiro, who was instrumental to the success of cinchona cultivation in the company. Furthermore, we reveal that a log of unknown origin, which had been left untouched for years at Hoshi University, was the cinchona log from the time when Hoshi Pharmaceutical succeeded in the cultivation.