It was a little perturbing to watch how Japanese media, notably the Japanese national broadcaster, NHK, presented the announcements for the Nobel Prizes this year, 2016.
The Nobel Prizes are awarded as recognition for advances in the academic, cultural, and scientific fields. However, on the day before the announcement of the first award this year, the national broadcaster presented the Noble Prizes more like the Nobel Olympic Games, with Japan, on 25 medals, in second place behind the United States of America, and attempted to educe excitement by questioning viewers how many medals Japan might get this year.
The first award announced was in the field of Chemistry, and congratulations must go to Mr. Yoshinori Osumi for being awarded the Nobel Prize this year. It is wonderful to see that the years of hard work and dedication he has put into his field, and the same hard work and dedication of each laureate over the years, has been rewarded and publicised. Criticism should be awarded to the Japanese national broadcaster for its handling of the reporting of the awards.
For more than 24 hours, the Japanese television viewer was bombarded with information about Mr. Osumi, his research, his workplace, his university, his high school, his home town, his colleagues, and restaurants he has frequented. There were interviews with his fellow researchers, other knowledgeable academics detailing the importance and application of the research, his wife, old boys from his days at university, and current students at the middle school and high school at which he was a student many years ago, who stated how much they wanted to emulate Mr. Osumi.
On the next day, the Nobel Prize for Physics was announced. And how did the Japanese national broadcaster report this on twitter? Not by stating who won the award for what reason, but simply that it was not won by a Japanese person.
Ramblings and Ruminations 