To clarify how students' awareness is linked to their understanding of Kampo medicine, we carried out a questionnaire and test for 94 fourth-year medical students (MS) following all the lectures at Yamaguchi University School of Medicine.Gender was not associated with performance in the test.MS having been admitted to an undergraduate program had a significantly better performance record in the test than did MS who had passed the usual university entrance examinations (P < 0.0001).MS who had experienced the efficacy of Kampo medicine had a significantly better performance record in the test than did MS who had not.Understanding of both the merits and demerits of Kampo medicine, a desire to see bedside teaching of Kampo medicine currently or in the future, and a desire to integrate Kampo medicine with primary care in the future were associated with a better performance record in the test.Multiple logistic regression analysis showed that admission to an undergraduate program (odds ratio (OR) = 6.9) and having experienced the efficacy of Kampo medicine (OR = 4.5) were independently contributing factors to a good performance record in the test.Taken together, these results suggest that experiencing efficacy and bedside teaching are needed to increase understanding of Kampo medicine for MS.

At the 71st Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Oriental Medicine held in August 2021, we performed a special program focusing on education in Kampo medicine, “Pre-graduation and post-graduation education in Kampo medicine for the next generation.” As a part of this project, we constructed the “Common Kampo test” based on the “Standard lectures on Kampo” as a web-based test using Moodle, and then the test was conducted in the form of a web test with 163 participants. The commentary of the “Common Kampo test” was live-streamed and was viewed by many participants, including students, educators and academics from all over Japan. In this paper, we report on the series covering the construction of the web system, creation of questions, answer results, and commentary on answers. With the recent popularization of tablet devices and smartphones, this web-based test system has the potential to become a scientifically based and optimal learning system not only for students but also for medical professionals such as doctors, pharmacists, and nurses.