In order to provide a technology that makes it possible to introduce, by an easy method, a newly released peripheral device into an endoscopic system that includes a video processor and a peripheral device, a destination management processing unit 13 of a video processor 1 and a destination management processing unit 23 of a peripheral device 2 each perform destination management processing in a communication between the video processor 1 and the peripheral device 2. A plurality of communication processing units 12A-12Z, 22A-22Z are situated above the destination management processing unit 13,23, respectively correspond to functions of a plurality of peripheral devices A to Z, and each process a command. When the destination management processing unit 13,23 transmits a command, the destination management processing unit 13, 23 adds, to the command to be transmitted, destination information that indicates which of the plurality of communication processing units 12,22 is to be used. When the destination management processing unit 13,23 has received a command, the destination management processing unit 13,23 determines a destination of the received command using destination information added to the received command and distributes the received command to a communication processing unit from among the plurality of communication processing units 12,22 that is indicated by the destination.
