{"id":6308,"date":"2025-05-18T02:49:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T17:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/?p=6308"},"modified":"2026-06-11T21:59:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T12:59:56","slug":"drama-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/column\/drama-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Yakuzen is not medicine. It is dietary therapy from Chinese medicine for looking after your body"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Yakuzen<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A yakuzen drama on NHK, of all things. Even now, do watch Shiawase wa Tabete Nete Mate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I was a little late catching it live, but...
how had I missed that NHK was airing a yakuzen drama this lovely?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Shiawase wa Tabete Nete Mate is about<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/strong> and
she starts using food to settle how she feels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trouble caused by yakuzen? An important message<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What stayed with me personally
was a scene with her neighbour Tsukasa, played by Hio Miyazawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Satoko tries to offer some yakuzen advice,
Tsukasa turns her down flatly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/strong> That was in his past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Western medicine and Chinese medicine both matter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I have always said that Western medicine and Chinese medicine both matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some teachers introduce yakuzen as preventive care,
but once you are ill, settling things with yakuzen alone is hard.<\/strong> That is how it feels to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strengths of yakuzen, as I see them, are these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  • \u2714\ufe0f Support as preventive care<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \u2714\ufe0f Beauty from the inside<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \u2714\ufe0f Care at the pre-illness stage, before it becomes an illness<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • \u2714\ufe0f Nourishing yourself through food while unwell<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

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

    Until next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A yakuzen drama is on NHK. On what makes yakuzen worth keeping up lightly, alongside Western medicine<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"swell_btn_cv_data":"","footnotes":"","ssp_meta_description":"\u85ac\u81b3\u306f\u85ac\u3067\u306f\u306a\u304f\u3001\u4f53\u3092\u30b1\u30a2\u3059\u308b\u6771\u6d0b\u533b\u5b66\u306e\u98df\u4e8b\u306e\u77e5\u6075\u3002NHK\u30c9\u30e9\u30de\u300e\u3057\u3042\u308f\u305b\u306f\u98df\u3079\u3066\u5bdd\u3066\u5f85\u3066\u300f\u3092\u304d\u3063\u304b\u3051\u306b\u3001\u85ac\u81b3\u3068\u306f\u4f55\u304b\u3092\u3084\u3055\u3057\u304f\u7d39\u4ecb\u3059\u308b\u30b3\u30e9\u30e0\u3067\u3059\u3002"},"categories":[168],"tags":[169,178],"class_list":["post-6308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","tag-column","tag-eat-sleep-happy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6308"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7859,"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6308\/revisions\/7859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yasai-yakuzen.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}