Western drugs typically have a single active ingredient, kampo preparations ordinarily contain multiple herbs. The 129 prescription kampo preparations sold by Tsumura consist of extracts from at least 2 and as many as 18 herbs. Different combinations and proportions of herbal ingredients have evolved th rough thousands of years of experience. Those formulations have proved to be optimally effective in restoring physiological balance at different stages of different health disorders.

The difference between Kampo and Western practice becomes especially apparent when patients experience symptoms which causes are undetectable with Western diagnostic procedures. Kampo practitioners recognize the existence of imbalances in the body that can cause very real symptoms in the absence of detectable pathogens. And kampo preparations provide physicians to treat those imbalances. Effectiveness in treating difficult-to-diagnose health problems is just one of several advantages that kampo methodology and kampo preparations offer over Western practice and chemical pharmaceuticals. Japanese physicians enjoy the option of combining the best of kampo and Western medicine in devising optimal treatments for patients. Eastern medical treatment is available in parallel with Western practices in other nations. But patients generally need to turn to different professionals for the different approaches. Only in Japan, a combination of traditional and Western diagnosis and treatment is available from the same physicians.