ETHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Minoru Shirota

Minoru Shirota was born in April 1899 in the village which is located beside the River Inadani Tenryuu in Western Nagano, Japan. Minoru Shirota, a Doctor of Medicine, began his medical studies in 1921 at Kyoto Imperial University (now Kyoto University). At the time, Japan had yet to achieve economic prosperity, and unsanitary conditions caused large numbers of children to die of infectious diseases.

Disturbed by that reality, Dr. Shirota, while still a medical student set his sights on the field of preventive medicine, which aims to help people avoid sickness, and started down the path of microorganism research. He get the consciousness to create the bacteria to prevent the diseases.

In his research, Dr. Shirota discovered that lactobacilli were effective in suppressing harmful bacteria within the intestines. He later became the first to successfully strengthen and culture a strain of lactobacilli, which is now known as Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota.

Dr. Shirota, together with volunteers, then developed an inexpensive, good tasting beverage, so that as many people as possible could benefit from Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota, which reaches the intestines alive and promotes intestinal health. That is how the Yakult lactobacillus based beverage was born in 1935 and was the beginning of the Yakult that is loved throughout the world.