Yakuzen is not medicine. It is dietary therapy from Chinese medicine for looking after your body

A yakuzen drama on NHK, of all things. Even now, do watch Shiawase wa Tabete Nete Mate

I was a little late catching it live, but...
how had I missed that NHK was airing a yakuzen drama this lovely?

Dramas with yakuzen as their theme are genuinely rare,
so if even one more person comes away asking what yakuzen actually is,
that would make me happy.

I am genuinely sad there are only two episodes left,
so while the moment lasts I want to write a few short columns
about the things I noticed in it and the ingredients it uses.
The next two weeks look like being a burst of posts.

What Shiawase wa Tabete Nete Mate is about

The lead is Satoko Mugimaki, 38, single.
She works part-time four days a week and lives alone in a housing estate flat at 50,000 yen a month.

She used to be a hard-driving company employee, but left after developing a connective tissue disease.
As she rethinks how she lives, chance brings her yakuzen and
she starts using food to settle how she feels.

The warmth of the people she meets on the estate,
and the yakuzen meals she cooks each day, slowly bring her mind and body back. That is the story.

Trouble caused by yakuzen? An important message

What stayed with me personally
was a scene with her neighbour Tsukasa, played by Hio Miyazawa.

When Satoko tries to offer some yakuzen advice,
Tsukasa turns her down flatly.

The reason is that he once recommended yakuzen to someone who was ill,
and that person stopped their main medical treatment, which led to serious trouble. That was in his past.

The fact that the drama went out of its way to show this early on
struck me as an important message: yakuzen is not a cure-all, and the balance with medicine matters.

Western medicine and Chinese medicine both matter

I have always said that Western medicine and Chinese medicine both matter.

Some teachers introduce yakuzen as preventive care,
but once you are ill, settling things with yakuzen alone is hard. That is how it feels to me.

The strengths of yakuzen, as I see them, are these.

• ✔️ Support as preventive care
• ✔️ Beauty from the inside
• ✔️ Care at the pre-illness stage, before it becomes an illness
• ✔️ Nourishing yourself through food while unwell

Which is exactly why not going all in, but keeping it light and long, is about right.
I want to keep my own relationship with yakuzen thin and long, and enjoy life alongside it.

Until next time.