OBJECTIVES: In Japan, more than 18,000 medicines are subject to reimbursement with medical fees. People can have access to any drug among more than 18,000 medicines, regardless of the type of public health insurance they subscribe to. The prescription depends on each doctor’s attitude towards medication and hospital formulary (HF). Since April 2016, The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour announced that they will introduce health-economic evaluation for approval of drug. On the other hand, there is no explicit criterion for development HF and it remains questionable whether each hospital selects each medicine objectively. We will offer an overview of the current trends of Japanese formularies and consider what requires for improvement. METHODS: The PubMed and Igaku-Chuo-Zasshi were used to search the reference related to HF in Japan from 2000 to 2015. RESULTS: There are 34 surveys found on development of Japanese hospital formulary. Most of them mainly discuss how to develop a book of formulary rather than how to select medicines. Some studies pointed out that many facilities lay weight on the frequency of prescription although they consider recommendations from clinical guidelines. In addition, several researches suggest the tendencies which they are more sensitive to medical cost, whereas quarter of them do not perform any pharmacoeconomic analysis. CONCLUSIONS: The paucity of research on development of HF suggests a lack of interest in the topic in Japan. In order to have a fair allocation of health and monetary resources, we need to review the role and making process of HF. Minimum requirements to develop Japanese HF should also be considered.