The , established in 1929, is an award presented by the Japanese newspaper ''

Asahi Shimbun is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition a ...

'' and Asahi Shimbun Foundation to honor individuals and groups that have made outstanding accomplishments in the fields of arts and academics and have greatly contributed to the development and progress of Japanese culture and society at large. The Asahi Prize was created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the foundation of ''Asahi Shimbun''. It is recognized today as one of the most authoritative private awards.

Prize winners

Past prize winners include the following.

Arts

Tsubouchi Shōyō __NoTOC__ was a Japanese author, critic, playwright, translator, editor, educator, and professor at Waseda University. He has been referred to as a seminal figure in Japanese drama. "Wetmore deals cleanly with Japanese theatre as part of the mod ...

, novelist, 1929 *

Taikan Yokoyama was the art-name of a major figure in pre-World War II Japanese painting. He is notable for helping create the Japanese painting technique of ''Nihonga''. Early life Yokoyama was born in Mito city, Ibaraki Prefecture, as the eldest son of ...

, artist, 1933 * Jigoro Kano, founder of judo, 1935 * Shimazaki Toson, novelist, 1935 * Ryōhei Koiso, painter, 1939 *

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki was a Japanese author who is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. The tone and subject matter of his work ranges from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle por ...

, novelist, 1948 *

NHK Symphony Orchestra The is a Japanese broadcast orchestra based in Tokyo. The orchestra gives concerts in several venues, including the NHK Hall, Suntory Hall, and the Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall. History The orchestra began as the ''New Symphony Orchestra'' on ...

, 1951 *

Mashiho Chiri Mashiho Chiri () (February 24, 1909 June 9, 1961) was an Ainu linguist and anthropologist. He was best known for creating Ainu-Japanese dictionaries. Biography Chiri was born on February 24, 1909 in what is now Noboribetsu, Hokkaido, Japan. ...

, 1954 *

Eiji Yoshikawa was a Japanese historical novelist. Among his best-known novels are revisions of older classics. He was mainly influenced by classics such as '' The Tale of the Heike'', ''Tale of Genji'', ''Water Margin'' and ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'', ...

, novelist, 1955 * Shikō Munakata, artist, 1964 *

Jirō Osaragi was the pen-name of a popular Japanese writer in Shōwa period Japan, known primarily for his historical fiction novels, which appeared serialized in newspapers and magazines. His real name was . Early life Osaragi Jirō was born in Yokohama. Hi ...

, writer, 1964 *

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...

, film director, 1965 * Haruko Sugimura, actress, 1968 * Ryōtarō Shiba, novelist, 1982 *

Ineko Sata , also , born , was a Japanese writer closely connected to the Proletarian Literature Movement. An advocate of women's rights, she has also repeatedly been linked to the feminist movement. Biography Early life and career Born in Nagasaki to yo ...

, writer, 1983 *

Yasushi Inoue was a Japanese writer of novels, short stories, poetry and essays, noted for his historical and autobiographical fiction. His most acclaimed works include '' The Bullfight'' (''Tōgyū'', 1949), ''The Roof Tile of Tempyō'' (''Tenpyō no iraka' ...

, novelist, 1984 *

Seiji Ozawa Seiji (written: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , or in hiragana) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese ski jumper *, Japanese racing driver *, Japanese politician *, Japanese film directo ...

, conductor, 1985 *

Osamu Tezuka Osamu Tezuka (, born , ''Tezuka Osamu''; – 9 February 1989) was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, and animator. Born in Osaka Prefecture, his prolific output, pioneering techniques, and innovative redefinitions of genres earned him such ...

, manga artist, 1987 *

Migishi Setsuko Migishi Setsuko (三岸節子, January 3, 1905 – April 18, 1999) was a Japanese ''yōga'' (Western-style) painter. Known for employing vivid colors and bold strokes for still-life and landscape, Migishi contributed greatly to the establishmen ...

, artist, 1989 *

Seichō Matsumoto was a Japanese writer, credited with popularizing detective fiction in Japan. Matsumoto's works broke new ground by incorporating elements of human psychology and ordinary life. His works often reflect a wider social context and postwar nihil ...

, novelist, 1989 *

Shuhei Fujisawa (26 December 1927 – 26 January 1997) was a Japanese author, whose real name was Tomeji Kosuge. (小菅留治). Over fifty of his books were published through the course of his lifetime, including both full-length novels and short story anthologi ...

, novelist, 1993 *

Tadao Ando is a Japanese autodidact architect whose approach to architecture and landscape was categorized by architectural historian Francesco Dal Co as "critical regionalism". He is the winner of the 1995 Pritzker Prize. Early life Ando was born a few m ...

, architect, 1994 (1996

Praemium Imperiale Prince Takamatsu The Praemium Imperiale ( ja, 高松宮殿下記念世界文化賞, Takamatsu-no-miya Denka Kinen Sekai Bunka-shō, World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu) is an international art prize inaugur ...

winner) (1997 Royal Gold Medal winner) * Kenzaburō Ōe, novelist, 1994 (1994 Nobel Prize in Literature) * Shuntaro Tanikawa, poet, 1995 * Yoji Yamada, film director, 1996 *

Donald Keene Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japane ...

, writer, 1997 *

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attribute ...

, artist, 2000 (2006

winner) * Hayao Miyazaki, film director, 2001 (2002

Academy Award for Best Animated Feature The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for animated films. An animated feature is defined by the Academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by- ...

winner) * Ai Nagai, playwright, 2005 *

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer. His novels, essays, and short stories have been bestsellers in Japan and internationally, with his work translated into 50 languages and having sold millions of copies outside Japan. He has received numerous awards for his ...

, novelist, 2006 *

Shigeru Mizuki was a Japanese manga artist and historian, best known for his manga series ''GeGeGe no Kitarō''. Born in a hospital in Osaka and raised in the city of Sakaiminato, Tottori, he later moved to Chōfu, Tokyo where he remained until his death ...

, manga artist, 2008 * Tadanori Yokoo, artist, 2011 *

Takarazuka Revue The is a Japanese all-female musical theatre troupe based in Takarazuka, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. Women play all roles in lavish, Broadway-style productions of Western-style musicals and stories adapted from films, novels, manga, and Jap ...

, 2013 *

Tatsuya Nakadai is a Japanese film actor. He was featured in 11 films directed by Masaki Kobayashi, including '' The Human Condition'' trilogy, wherein he starred as the lead character Kaji, plus ''Harakiri'', '' Samurai Rebellion'' and '' Kwaidan''. Nakadai ...

, actor, 2013 * Shigeru Ban, architect, 2014 *

Taichi Yamada is a Japanese screenwriter and novelist. His real name is . Career Born in Asakusa, Tokyo, Yamada attended Waseda University before entering the Shōchiku film studios, where he trained as an assistant director under Keisuke Kinoshita. He left th ...

, screenwriter, 2014 * Tōta Kaneko, poet 2015 * Kazushi Ono, conductor 2015 *

Moto Hagio is a Japanese manga artist. Regarded for her contributions to ''shōjo'' manga ( manga aimed at young and adolescent women), Hagio is considered the most significant artist in the demographic and among the most influential manga artists of al ...

, manga artist, 2016 *

Jakucho Setouchi (15 May 1922 – 9 November 2021; born formerly known as was a Japanese Buddhist nun, writer, and activist. Setouchi wrote a best-selling translation of '' The Tale of Genji'' and over 400 fictional biographical and historical novels. In 1997 ...

novelist, 2017 * Yoko Tawada, writer, 2019 * Haruomi Hosono. bass player, 2020 *

Daidō Moriyama is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography and association with the avant-garde photography magazine '' Provoke''. Moriyama’s rough, unfettered photographic style makes use of sharply tilted angles, grain ...

, photographer, 2020 *

Machi Tawara is a contemporary Japanese writer, translator and poet. Tawara is most famous as a contemporary poet. She is credited with revitalizing the tanka for modern Japanese audiences. Her skill as a translator consist of translating classical Japanese ...

, poet, 2021

Science

* Yoshio Nishina, physicist, 1944 * Shinichiro Tomonaga, physicist, 1946 (1965

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

in Physics) * Shoichi Sakata, physicist, 1948 * Tomizo Yoshida, pathologist, 1951 * Kiyoshi Oka, mathematician, 1953 *

Leo Esaki Reona Esaki (江崎玲於奈 ''Esaki Reona'', born March 12, 1925), also known as Leo Esaki, is a Japanese physicist who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 with Ivar Giaever and Brian David Josephson for his work in electron tunneling i ...

, physicist, 1959 (1973 Nobel Prize in Physics) * Osamu Hayaishi, biochemist, 1964 (1986

Wolf Prize in Medicine The Wolf Prize in Medicine is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Arts. The ...

) *

Yoshimasa Hirata was a Japanese organic chemist. Biography Hirata was born in Yamaguchi, Japan in 1915. He received a Bachelor of Science from the Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1941, and then joined the faculty there as a Lecturer ...

, chemist, 1965 * Chushiro Hayashi, astrophysicist, 1965 *

Heisuke Hironaka is a Japanese mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970 for his contributions to algebraic geometry. Career Hironaka entered Kyoto University in 1949. After completing his undergraduate studies at Kyoto University, he received his ...

, mathematician, 1967 (1970

Fields Medal The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award h ...

) * Setsuro Ebashi, biomedical scientist, 1968 (1999 International Prize for Biology) * Reiji Okazaki, molecular biologist, 1970 * Kimishige Ishizaka, immunologist, 1973 * Kiyoshi Itô, mathematician, 1977 (2006 Gauss Prize) *

Susumu Tonegawa is a Japanese scientist who was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for his discovery of V(D)J recombination, the genetic mechanism which produces antibody diversity. Although he won the Nobel Prize for his w ...

, molecular biologist, 1981 (1987 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) * Tasuku Honjo, immunologist, 1981 (2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) * Hidesaburo Hanafusa, virologist, 1983 *

Masaki Watanabe Masaki Watanabe (渡辺正毅, 1911 – 15 October 1995) was a Japanese orthopedic surgeon, sometimes called the "founder of modern arthroscopy". Watanabe developed the first practical arthroscope. Watanabe was born in Nagano and graduate ...

, orthopedic surgeon, 1983 * Yasutomi Nishizuka, biochemist, 1985 (1994 Wolf Prize in Medicine) * Motoo Kimura, biologist, 1986 (1992

Darwin Medal The Darwin Medal is one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "distinction in evolution, biological diversity and developmental, population and organismal biology". In 1885, International Darwin Memorial Fund was transferred to the ...

) *

Kamiokande The is a neutrino and gravitational waves laboratory located underground in the Mozumi mine of the Kamioka Mining and Smelting Co. near the Kamioka section of the city of Hida in Gifu Prefecture, Japan. A set of groundbreaking neutrino experimen ...

Project Team (Leader: Masatoshi Koshiba), 1987 (2002 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Masaki Kashiwara is a Japanese mathematician. He was a student of Mikio Sato at the University of Tokyo. Kashiwara made leading contributions towards algebraic analysis, microlocal analysis, ''D''-module theory, Hodge theory, sheaf theory and representati ...

/ Takahiro Kawai, mathematician, 1987 *

Hirotsugu Akaike was a Japanese statistician. In the early 1970s, he formulated the Akaike information criterion (AIC). AIC is now widely used for model selection, which is commonly the most difficult aspect of statistical inference; additionally, AIC is the ba ...

, statistician, 1988 *

Tadamitsu Kishimoto is a Japanese immunologist known for research on IgM and cytokines, most famously, interleukin 6. He did postdoctoral work under Kimishige Ishizaka, the discoverer of IgE at Johns Hopkins University. He is listed by the Institute for Scientifi ...

, immunologist, 1988 (2009 Crafoord Prize) * Tadatsugu Taniguchi, immunologist, 1988 *

Tomisaku Kawasaki was a Japanese pediatrician who first described the condition now known as Kawasaki disease in the 1960s. Alongside rheumatic heart disease, Kawasaki disease is considered to be the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children worldwide. ...

, pediatrician, 1989 * Masato Sagawa, Metallurgist, 1990 (2012

Japan Prize is awarded to people from all parts of the world whose "original and outstanding achievements in science and technology are recognized as having advanced the frontiers of knowledge and served the cause of peace and prosperity for mankind." The P ...

) * Goro Shimura, mathematician, 1991 * Ryoji Noyori, chemist, 1992 (2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) * Masatoshi Takeichi, biologist, 1993 * Makoto Kobayashi, physicist, 1994 (2008 Nobel Prize in Physics) * Toshihide Masukawa, physicist, 1994 (2008 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Nobutaka Hirokawa (born March 25, 1946) is a Japanese neuroscientist and cell biologist famous for research on the kinesin superfamily of motor proteins. He has been President and Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Human Frontier Science Program since 2012. ...

, neuroscientist, 1995 *

Syukuro Manabe is a Japanese-American meteorologist and climatologist who pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Klaus Hasselmann and Gi ...

, meteorologist, 1995 (2021 Nobel Prize in Physics) * Sumio Iijima, physicist, 1996 *

Shigekazu Nagata is a Japanese biochemist, best known for research on apoptosis, the process of programmed cell death occurring in multi-cellular organisms. Contribution Nagata identified Interferon in 1980 and Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor in 1986. ...

, molecular biologist, 1997 * Super Kamiokande Project Team (Leader: Yoji Totsuka), 1998 * Toshio Yanagida, biophysicist, 1998 * Seiji Ogawa, physicist, 1999 * Shuji Nakamura, material scientist, 2000 (2014 Nobel Prize in Physics) * Isamu Akasaki, material scientist, 2000 (2014 Nobel Prize in Physics) *

Shizuo Akira (born January 27, 1953 in Higashiōsaka) is a professor at the Department of Host Defense, Osaka University, Japan. He has made ground-breaking discoveries in the field of immunology, most significantly in the area of innate host defense mechani ...

, immunologist, 2005 *

Takao Kondo is a Japanese biologist and professor of biological science at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan. He is best known for reconstituting the circadian clock '' in vitro''. Biography Kondo was born in 1948 in Kariya, Aichi, Japan, and received h ...

, biologist, 2006 * Osamu Shimomura, chemist, 2006 (2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) *

Shinya Yamanaka is a Japanese stem cell researcher and a Nobel Prize laureate. He serves as the director of Center for iPS Cell (induced Pluripotent Stem Cell) Research and Application and a professor at the Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences at Kyo ...

, biomedical scientist, 2007 (2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) * Yoshinori Ohsumi, biologist, 2008 (2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) *

Hayabusa was a robotic spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis. ''Hayabusa'', formerly known as MUSES-C fo ...

Mission (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), 2010 * Kenji Kosaka, psychiatrist, 2013 * Kazutoshi Mori, molecular biologist, 2013 (2014

Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research The Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research is one of the prizes awarded by the Lasker Foundation for a fundamental discovery that opens up a new area of biomedical science. The award frequently precedes a Nobel Prize in Medicine; almost 5 ...

) * Hiroaki Mitsuya, virologist, 2014 * Satoshi Ōmura, biochemist, 2014 (2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) * Hiraku Nakajima, mathematician, 2016 * Jaw-Shen Tsai, Taiwanese physicist, 2020 * Takurō Mochizuki, mathematician, 2020 (2022 Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics) * Keiko Torii, plant scientist, 2021

References

External links

*
Website of the Asahi Shimbun
with information on the award winners sorted by year of award
Website of the Asahi Shimbun
with information on the winners from 2001 to 2017
Website of the Asahi Shimbun
with information on the winners from 1971 to 2000
Website of the Asahi Shimbun
with information on the winners from 1929 to 1970
Website of the Asahi Shimbun
with information on the winners from 1929 to recent years and a description of the achievements since 2000 {{in lang, en Academic awards Awards established in 1929 Visual arts awards Japanese science and technology awards 1929 establishments in Japan