Kazuto Ihara

Administrative Vice Minister, Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare

“The ministry posted me to New York about 30 years ago. Japanese pharmaceutical manufacturers were just beginning to stake out a significant presence in the U.S. market, and my job was to help facilitate that movement. The overseas percentage of sales at the Japanese drug makers was then about 20%. Today, it has expanded to nearly 70%. I stand in awe of the path that our pharmaceutical industry has stridden.

“Megapharma was the dominant trend in the global pharmaceutical industry when I was in the U.S. The thinking was that massive corporate scale was a prerequisite for drug development. Today, we still have big pharmaceutical companies, but as we have seen here today, venture companies play a big role in the vanguard of medical R&D.”

The Japanese government’s commitment to building a global ecosystem for drug discovery starts at the top. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida hosted the Gate Opening Summit for Innovative Drug Discovery, reported Ihara, at the prime minister’s office on July 30, 2024. Kishida outlined in remarks to that gathering the policy framework for building the ecosystem.

Ihara also touched on the challenge of ensuring universal access to the fruits of leading-edge advances in medicine. He noted that Japan is rare in guaranteeing access to high-grade health care to essentially its entire population. Maintaining that access amid demographic change, he added, will require innovation in administering the insurance framework, as well as innovation in medical technology.