Japan's scientific elite and Nobel laureates

On Dec. 10, four Japanese scientists will receive Nobel Prizes from King of Sweden. The first three have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. They are physicists Yoichiro Nambu (US citizen), Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Masukawa. The fourth, Osamu Shimomura, has won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Since the end of the 1940s, when Japan became eligible the prize introduced by Alfred Nobel in 1895, twelve Japanese have won in the field of science, three in literature and one for peace. Their first Nobel laureate was physicist Dr. Hideki Yukawa in 1949. En toto, Japan has received 16 Nobel Prizes in just over half a century. Already in the twenty-first century alone, and in the fields of physics and chemistry, there have been other winners. In 2000, Hideki Shirakawa was awarded the Nobel in Chemistry. In 2001, Ryoji Noyori also won in chemistry. And in 2002, Masatoshi Toshiba won in Physics and Koichi Tanaka received the Nobel in chemistry.

These achievements are truly astounding, especially when considering Japan had a late start in its development of world-class specialists. These endeavors only emerge during the Meiji period during which the Japanese world’s institutions were shaken to their core, as the nation strove to adopt European and American models.

Japan had experienced a long period of peace that lasted almost two and a half centuries. It was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world ("sakoku") and existed inside a bubble of self-sufficiency. Japanese life revolved around the cultivation of rice and a socio-political structure managed by the strongly traditionalist military power of the shoguns. But in 1853, under the incontrovertible threat of US steam battleships – heretofore unseen by Japanese – forced the nation to integrate itself into world trade. In 1854, it was forced to open two ports for foreign trade. In 1858, it signed a shameful trade agreement, and then, under more or less similar conditions, to do the same with several European countries.

The upheaval in Japan, whereas it felt it had lost face, caused a schism wherein two factions faced off for ten, violent years. When a consensus was finally reached in 1868, the Emperor himself was able to negotiate with the West regarding integration and in order to obtain more just terms. However, he was forced to recognize that he would not be heeded while Japan was considered a backward country with no rights to demand equal treatment. But Japanese will and honor won out and the Meiji emperor set a seemingly impossible goal of catching up to the industrialized West within an extremely short amount of time.

From that point on Japan entered a feverish period of change which flattens anything that might impede its tremendous leap forward (including the traditional and prestigious samurai class). Socially, tens of thousands of families are sacrificed because they are unable to adapt to new demands; or rather, because the jobs created by new industries fail to employ all the Japanese leaving the countryside. Misery is widespread but in the midst of it, modern Japan begins to emerge; an industrial and commercial nation which has diplomatic ties to the entire world. In less than forty years, it regains its honor and right to negotiate with justice, making its weight felt as a world power.

In order to carry out this revolutionary change, Japan was forced to impose a different educational system; one which trained the new Japanese man how to meet the demands of the emerging industrial age. At the same time, it sought to maintain their ancestral nationalism. It is worth recalling that traditional Japanese educational policies were aimed at forming a Collective man; men with no apparent differences between them. The system only promoted a uniformity of development to achieve a medium-high level. The minority below or above this medium-range group received no special attention. It was expected to behave in such a way that did not impact the larger group’s tranquility. Thus, this guaranteed a citizen and as a producer that fit perfectly with the mandates set by tradition and work requirements, and by the governing laws, for the expected responses to circumstantial imperatives and for harmonious coexistence governed by morality and secular traditions

But with its leap into modernity, the untapped potential of the upper end of society gained special significance. This gifted class now had the opportunity to be successful in the new institutes of higher learning which prioritized engineering. Its graduates mastered design, calculation and modifications necessary to introduce the foreign model. At the same time, the new graduates began to replace foreign experts employed in key production posts. In fact, demand for these professions became so high that in the early 1900s, many graduates immigrated to America. (Some of Chile’s pioneers in the field arrived during this period.)

(Regarding engineers, there is currently a biannual prize equivalent to the Nobel Prize, for those who contribute to discoveries that benefit the world - Nobel did not include either mathematicians or engineers. It is the Millennium Technology Prize. The second to receive the award was Shuji Nakamura (2006) nicknamed the "Edison of the 21st Century").

During the post-war period, as soon as conditions permitted, the project to promote the training of elite intellectuals followed the pre-established course. Japan apportioned the necessary resources to continue to develop the knowledge, research and development skills in several disciplines. To do so, the elect few began to travel to prestigious companies, laboratories and overseas universities while the country prepared its infrastructure and conditions which enabled these exceptional specialists to continue moving ahead and creating within their own land.

Nowadays, these intellectual elite continue delivering the fruit of their labor on behalf of mankind. These 16 Nobel laureates, who have so far been nominated, should be awarded the Nobel.