Seirogan’s “trumpet mark” stomach pills have run on Japanese TV forever. While reading about Taiko Pharmaceutical I noted some trivia and their PR battles with Lion’s “Stopper” antidiarrheal.

Taiko’s lineup (stomach-heavy)

• Seirogan (flagship), “Pishatto” antidiarrheal, Hiyakiogan (herbal infant soother), wood vinegar bath additive, and Cleverin (chlorine dioxide disinfectant).
• Domain is seirogan.co.jp—they lean hard on the brand.

“Pishatto” vs. “Stopper”

Lion’s famous antidiarrheal is “Stopper”; Taiko’s is “Pishatto” (onomatopoeic “shut it”). Twitter roasted the name for sounding like… the opposite (“splashed out”). Both products date back to around 2001 per searches, but Pishatto never caught Stopper’s recognition.

PR stunts: Seirogan toilet vs. exam-student ads

• Taiko built a giant Seirogan-themed portable toilet for events (now only on Web Archive). Even the toilet paper had “diarrhea anecdotes.” It stood out at fireworks/marathons—though maybe better suited to train stations than dates in yukata.
• Lion went all-in on exam-season campaigns for Stopper: shrine offerings to the “stomach god,” wrapped trains, elaborate subway ads, a “nearest campus toilet” app. Plenty of budget; tying “nerves → bathroom” to entrance exams made it an easy good-luck charm alongside KitKat.

Hiyakiogan (herbal)

Taiko acquired exclusive sales rights in 2011 from Hiyaseiyaku (founded 1622). The CM (“baby night-crying? Hiyakiogan!”) is notorious; old spots feature comedian Kazuo Kuwabara looking ageless, like Doc Brown staying the same across decades.

Market / stock tidbits

• Listed on TSE 2nd section in 2009; reinforced infection-control business after launching Cleverin in 2005. Acquired patents from Business Plan Co. to expand.
• Cleverin has industrial generators; Sharp’s plasmacluster has comparable industrial units (even sold on Amazon JP for ~¥580,000).
• Stock spiked post-listing, dipped; began rising again around 2013 as they opened a Taiwan branch. They even recruited executives via BizReach.
• In 2015 Taiko donated Cleverin to Guinea/Liberia for public health; would love to see outcome data.

Odd Wikipedia mirror

Searching 2009 info surfaced a mysterious Wikipedia mirror on a Jordanian university domain (ammanu.edu.jo/wiki1) indexing 620k pages. Not directly Taiko-related, just a weird detour while researching.

edu means it’s a school; opening the homepage shows Al-Ahliyya Amman University. Hatena bookmarks were also puzzled why the mirror isn’t demoted by Google.

When I tried searching for listing info using a 2009 date filter, Wikipedia was being served from an unfamiliar host: “Daiko Pharmaceutical – Wikipedia (www.ammanu.edu.jo).”

The domain ammanu.edu.jo is a Jordanian university (.edu tipped me off). Opening it shows it’s a Jordanian university.

Hatena user id:sauvage noted: “This /wiki1/ja/ mirror of Wikipedia keeps showing up in Google and getting in the way. Why isn’t it demoted as a copy? And why is it operated by a Jordanian university?”

It’s not just Taiko’s page; other pages are mirrored too. A site: search shows about 620,000 hits:

site:http://www.ammanu.edu.jo/wiki1 - Google Search

I tried tweaking the “wiki1” number up/down/omitting it, but only Japanese Wikipedia pages came up. No idea why. Maybe a student scraping Japanese pages to learn the language?