Recently in Japan, people's attentions are directed toward health foods and various alternative or complementary medicine, which in Europe, have already been in practice for more than 10 years. Following this trend in Japan, some new movements necessary for the 21st century medical care are taking place in the medical world. Until now, medical practices focused on "controlling the symptoms" and "removing the cause of disease by ablation". However, constant appearances of situations unsolvable by the traditional medical practices such as those observed in lifestyle related diseases and various nervous disorders, dementia, and learning disabilities have lead to the awareness of the "limitation of western medicine".

Aromatherapy holds an important position within the area of integrated medicine. Aromatherapy is not simply just to enjoy the aroma but is also applied clinically in the medical field using the physiological and medicinal actions of essential oils. In order to use essential oils in the medical field, practices of medical aromatherapy by the medical professionals are expected. For the medical aromatherapy to be correctly and safely applied in the medical field, many fundamental and clinical research results must be properly evaluated for verification of their justification and reproducibility. However, the actual situation is that there exist only a handful of scientific method based fundamental and clinical aromatherapy researches being conducted worldwide.

Until today, there had been close to no international conferences aside from the Japan-Korea Aromatherapy Conference of 2001 held in Japan and of 2002 held in Korea. Therefore, we believe it meaningful to hold an international conference with Europe and America as well as Asia in order to accomplish the goal of establishing a global base for aromatherapy through active information exchanges on demonstrative and academic researches and practices of aromatherapy. In addition, aromatherapy researches are not limited to fundamental and clinical medicine researchers, but are also connected with the field of nursing and nursing care, pharmacy, chemistry, and even the ethics and law. Currently having approximately 250 companies in Japan handling essential oils, we are looking forward to active participations of these companies as well as of people in various fields who are interested in aromatherapy.

Seiji SHIODA, Ph.D.
Chairperson, ICA2012 Organization Committee
Chairperson, Japanese Society of Aromatherapy (JSA)
Professor, Department of Anatomy, School of Medicine, Showa University