[Doctors and jurists who objected to the separation of drug dispensaries from the medical practice in the Taisho Era].
Doctors were very nervous about the movements of pharmacists toward achievement of the separation of drug dispensaries in the medical practices and drug dispensation in 1914 and 1915. They specifically blamed one person, Professor Tokichiro Niwa of Tokyo Imperial University who strongly advocated the separation of dispensaries in the medical practices. Furthermore, they were also very anxious that the Japan Pharmacists Association had supported legislators who had stood by the separation of dispensaries from medical practice at the twelfth general election held on March 25, 1915. They were concerned that the domain of doctors' activities would be narrowed by such a separation. Professor Kunika Katayama of the Tokyo Imperial University School of Medicine published a thesis at his own cost advocating a modification of the doctor's law to prohibit the separation of dispensaries be legislation and insisting that the right prescribe a drug to a patient must remain with the doctor. Moreover, Professor Mitsue Ichimura of Kyoto Imperial University also insisted that a doctor has the right to give drugs to patients, and that as a jurist he disagreed with the separation of dispensaries from medical practice.