Daranisuke Research Lab is an art project exploring daranisuke gan, a traditional Japanese herbal medicine with a 1,300-year history, produced and sold in Dorogawa, a remote mountain village in Nara Prefecture. Through research and oral history interviews with local producers, the project investigates the mysteries surrounding this medicine—from its distinctive packaging designs to how it evolved into tiny 3mm black pills. Initially presented as a laboratory-like spatial installation at the Mind Trail art festival in 2020, it was later reconfigured as a permanent exhibition at the Tenkawa Village Museum in autumn 2021.

The exhibition invites visitors to "reflect, learn, imagine, and experience" through unusual perspectives: displaying actual antique tools and manufacturing equipment, comparing package designs from different Dorogawa shops, visualizing dosage amounts calculated from the pills' volume, and magnifying the act of scooping the pills. Even the exhibition fixtures use kihada (Amur cork tree) logs—the raw material of daranisuke—and are painted with original pigment made by boiling kihada bark, creating a material connection throughout.

With much of Dorogawa's historical records lost in two postwar fires, comprehensive documentation is scarce—limited primarily to a 1986 publication, "Daranisuke: Traditional Stomach Medicine from Heritage to Science." This exhibition was made possible through the rare surviving materials and, crucially, the oral traditions generously shared by the daranisuke producers who continue their craft in Dorogawa today.