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Takashi Watari,1– 3 Yasuhisa Nakano,4 Ashwin Gupta,2,3 Minami Kakehi,4 Ayuko Tokonami,4 Yasuharu Tokuda5 1General Medicine Center, Shimane University Hospital, Izumo, Shimane, Japan; 2Department of Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; 3Medicine Service, VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; 4Faculty of Medicine, Shimane University, Izumo, Shimane, Japan; 5Muribushi Okinawa Clinical Training Center, Urasoe, Okinawa, JapanCorrespondence: Takashi Watari, Shimane University Hospital, General Medicine Center, 89-1, Enya-cho, Izumo, Shimane, 693-8501, Japan, Tel +81-853-20-2005, Fax +81-853-20-2375, Email wataritari@gmail.comBackground: Japan created a specialty system for general medicine in 2018. However, Japanese academic generalists’ contribution to research remains unclear. This study examines the popularity of Japanese general medicine research, the characteristics of journal publications, annual trends, and the characteristics/differences among publications in journals with an impact factor (IF).Methods: This bibliometric analysis extracted international, English-language, journal articles published on PubMed between January 1, 2015, and December 31, 2020. Analysis included articles with either the first, second, or last author in general medicine. We classified articles according to publication or article type and field of research. We obtained standard descriptive statistics for each publication type. Chi-squared test or Fisher’s exact test was used to compare nominal variables. For continuous variables, t-tests or Wilcoxon rank-sum tests were used, as appropriate.Results: Of the 2372 articles analyzed, original articles were most common (56.3%), followed by case reports (30.1%), reviews (7.63%), and letters/others (5.9%). Publication volume increased 2.64-fold annually over 5 years. Clinical research (60.5%) was most common among original articles, followed by basic experimental research (17.5%) and public heal