Pursuing the identity of a natural medicine licorice by Dr. Shoji Shibata that he firstly investigated half a century before

Abstract

This article is an explanatory review on a study of licorice stored in Shosoin Repository reported in this journal by Dr. Shoji Shibata in 2003 (Proc. Jpn. Acad. Ser. B 79, 176–180). The study using new technologies at that time for identification of plant species was a follow-up research of his own study performed half a century before. The study revised previous results and elucidated that the licorice stored in Shosoin Repository was derived from Glycyeehiza uralensis.