Outline of JAMAS's Thesaurus
What is the JAMAS's Thesaurus?
A thesaurus for information search is a systematic organization of terms in a particular field, establishing relationships through synonymy and hierarchical structures.
JAMAS's Thesaurus is a thesaurus created for indexing and searching the Ichushi Database in medical and related fields (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, veterinary medicine, public health, etc.).
Since the publication of the first edition in 1983, it has been revised every four years. The third (published in 1994) and subsequent editions have been based on the Japanese translation of MeSH, with supplementary terms added in order to meet the needs of domestic medicine. As a result, about 90% of the terms registered in the JAMAS's Thesaurus are linked to MeSH terms.
This is the leading thesaurus of its kind in Japan.
Number of Terms Included, etc. in the JAMAS's Thesaurus
As of January. 2023, the latest 10th edition of JAMAS's Thesaurus includes 33,165 headwords. Approximately 90% of them are derived from MeSH. Other terms were adopted at our discretion, including those related to nursing/care, pharmaceutical products listed in the INN (International Nonproprietary Name), Kampo medicines, and Japanese domestic place names.
Synonyms and hierarchy in the JAMAS's Thesaurus
Synonym
JAMAS's Thesaurus contains 33,165 headings, which are related to 432,752 synonyms (as of Apr. 2025).
Synonym example
| Headword | Synonym |
|---|---|
| Insulin | Globin Zinc Insulin Novolin Penfill InnoLet Iszillin インスリン イノレット ノボリン ペンフィル 免疫インスリン イスジリン インシュリン etc. |
Hierarchy
The headings registered in the JAMAS's Thesaurus are classified into the following 15 categories A to N and Z, and are ranked hierarchically by the category code. One heading may belong to more than one category, or have more than one category code.
Major categories A to N and Z
A: Anatomy
B: Organisms
C: Diseases
D: Chemicals and Drugs
E: Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques, and Equipment
F: Psychiatry and Psychology
G: Phenomena and Processes
H: Disciplines and Occupations
I: Anthropology, Education, Sociology, and Social Phenomena
J: Technology, Industry, and Agriculture
K: Humanities
L: Information Science
M: Named Groups
N: Health Care
Z: Geographicals
Hierarchy example (Insulin)
Ichushi Free Keywords
Ichushi Free Keywords are the keywords not registered in the Thesaurus, but are indexed and maintained because of their importance. They are equivalent to MeSH Supplementary Concept Records (SCRs). New entries are created if judged necessary when unregistered chemical substances, disease names, or ideas are encountered during the indexing process. In principle, if new MeSH terms are added before the next revision of the JAMAS's Thesaurus, their translation in Japanese will be registered. Among the Ichushi Free Keywords, highly useful terms will be upgraded to JAMAS's Thesaurus terms when the Thesaurus is revised.
Ichushi Free Keywords have registered synonyms as the JAMAS's Thesaurus terms do, but do not have category codes. Instead, each Free Keyword is referred to a higher-level headword of the JAMAS's Thesaurus.
Provision of JAMAS's Thesaurus as dataset
JAMAS's Thesaurus is one of the leading thesauruses in the medical and related fields in Japan, and is also provided as a dataset for use in medical and healthcare services, apart from the Ichushi-Web.
In this case, the keywords included in the JAMAS's Thesaurus and Ichushi Free Keywords will be provided.