Distinguished Colleagues,

          It is my great pleasure to announce that the 37th Annual Scientific Meeting of The Japanese Society of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics will be held in Yonago, Japan from December 1 (Thursday) to 3 (Saturday), 2016. At every Annual Scientific Meeting of the Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, more than 2,000 members, medical specialists such as doctors, pharmacists, nurses, laboratory technicians and others, exchange and renew information which enhances motivation towards important research through attending many symposiums, presenting and discussing research results and making personal contacts for future cooperative endeavors.
          The theme of this meeting is “Innovation in Pharmacotherapeutics”. Clinical Pharmacology has a broad spectrum for personalized and optical utilization of medication from new drug development to rational use of drugs in humans. It involves regulation of medications, clinical trials and related ethical issues, and biological statistics, which have become hot topics in recent years. As innovation not only means “creating new pharmaceutical products”, I hope all participants at this meeting will hold to the aim, as I do, that innovating or creating everything in all aspects of pharmacotherapeutics is based on meaningful progress from the past until now. 
          Of course, coming here for the meeting is not all work - you will have some time after the meeting to enjoy our home, surrounded by wonderful natural beauty and a deep and long history – over 2,000 years! Yonago City is located in Tottori Prefecture between Mount Daisen, and Sakaiminato, the largest fishing port for Matsuba-gani crab in Japan. There are also many tourist spots such as Kitaro-road, Kaike Onsen hot spring, Tottori Hanakairo-flower Park and Adachi Museum of Art, a three-star site in the Michelin guide. (Please look at these sites on the Internet for more information.) Most interestingly, in this district there are a lot of very old stories about Okuninushi-no-mikoto in the Kojiki, the Record of Ancient Matters. Okuninushi-no-mikoto is also known as the God of Medicine, so this area is regarded as Japan’s birthplace of pharmacotherapy. What a great place for us to share ideas about our discipline.
          I really think this will be a fortuitous meeting, full of interesting and important ideas for new research into pharmacotherapy. I look forward to seeing many of you next year.

Junichi Hasegawa, MD, PhD
President, Annual Scientific Meeting of JSCPT2016
Professor, Division of Pharmacotherapeutics
Faculty of Medicine, Tottori University