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The Kyoto Prize is the Japanese competitor of the Swedish Nobel prize, but unfortunately still much less famous. It has been awarded annually since 1984 by the Inamori Foundation, which was established by Inamori Kazuo (”Profit is society’s award for serving its interests”) with his personal fortune, the founder and long-term president of high-tech company Kyocera. The Kyoto Prize is an international award that honors significant contributions to humanity in the fields of Advanced Technology, Basic Sciences, and Arts and Philosophy. Within each of these rather broad categories, the prize rotates among subfields. The award consists of a gold medal and 50 million yen (the equivalent of about 450,000 dollar) - about one third of the money awarded with the Nobel prize, but there winners often have to share.

I called the Kyoto Prize a competitor of the Nobel Prize, but it is more a complement, as it covers important fields that are neglected by the Nobel Prize, such as biotechnology, mathematics, earth sciences, astronomy, electronics, information science, music, fine art, theater and philisophy. Famous prize winners in previous years have been: Issey Miyake, Isamu Noguchi and Ando Tadao (art), Andrzej Wajda and Kurosawa Akira (film), Olivier Messiaen and Witold Lutoslawski (music), Jürgen Habermas (philosophy) , Noam Chomsky (cognitive science) and Jan Hendrik Oort (astronomy).

This year, the prize ceremony was held on November 10 at the Kyoto International Conference Center and prizes went to Dr. Inokuchi Hiroo (organic electronics), Dr. Kanamori Hiroo (seismology) and Ms. Pina Bausch (dance theater). Kanamori Hiroo especially is known as one of the world’s top seismologists, not unimportant in a “shaking country” like Japan.

I wonder why the Kyoto Prize does not manage to get more attention in both Japan and the world. It certainly is as noble an effort as its older brother, which neglects important fields of science and technology, not to speak of the arts. Of course, there is more pomp and ceremony at the Nobel Prize ceremony, where the Swedish king is present - in Japan the Imperial family pays attention in the person of Princess Takamado but the prime minister is conspicuously absent. On top of that, the Nobel prize every year creates lots of political stir and publicity with its peace prize, which is overhyped and even unnecessary when it is handed out to politicians whose cause is already well-known. I hope the star of the Kyoto Prize will gradually rise further.