About TSUBAMEDIA

ABOUT

TSUBAMEDIA is a publication devoted to edible bird’s nest, run by Japan Bansho Co., Ltd. — the company behind the edible bird’s nest brand BANSHO.

We handle edible bird’s nest as a business. We are not a neutral third party. We would rather say so at the outset than have you discover it later.

The representative director of Japan Bansho Co., Ltd. is Subaru Toki. He is also the representative of Lien Inc., and on 1 September 2026 he became the representative of CURERE Co., Ltd. as well.

So why run a publication?

Edible bird’s nest has been eaten for more than a thousand years. For all that time people have carried it by hand and paid a high price for it. And yet most of what can be read about it in Japanese is fragmentary, unsourced, and sometimes not even accurate.

We are deeply involved in the working reality of this material — sourcing, manufacturing, quality control, and collaboration with research institutions overseas. Being in the business is precisely what lets us see some of it.

And being in the business is precisely why we have to hold ourselves to a discipline: not to tell you only the convenient half.

What we hold ourselves to

• Every article carries its sources — the institution, the journal, and the year of publication.
• Every article has a section for what is still unknown. Where we cannot be certain, we do not write as though we were.
• We carry no advertising. We do not sell products inside articles.
• We do not rank or compare other companies’ products. Being in the business, we could not do it fairly. Instead we write about what to look at, so that you can judge for yourself.
• Any article touching on something we are involved in states the conflict of interest.
• The “From Bansho” section will always include pieces that are painful to publish. If we only lined up the good news, this declaration itself would be a lie.

Four kinds of article

For newcomers / Culture	Articles about edible bird’s nest itself. BANSHO does not appear.
Science	Peer-reviewed research only, reported no further than what the papers themselves say. As a rule BANSHO does not appear.
Visiting the origin / Meeting people	Reporting from the field. People connected to us may appear as interviewees.
From Bansho	We write about ourselves. Here we do not hide. Even here, though, we do not write about what any compound does, or how anything feels. It is a food, not a medicine.

We do not claim ours is the finest

We will not write that ours is the best. We will show you how it is made — all of it.

We go to Malaysia, photograph the birdhouses, walk into the factory, and sit down with researchers. We will keep stacking that up here. What you conclude from reading it is yours to decide.