Resisting the power structures hidden behind “awards”

Hirokazu Kobayashi

CEO, Green Insight Japan Co., Ltd.

Professor Emeritus and Visiting Professor, University of Shizuoka

As formative experiences during my elementary and junior high school years, winning prizes at local exhibitions for watercolor painting and calligraphy gave me confidence and motivation. On the other hand, early in my career as a researcher, my boss told me he wanted to nominate me for an “Encouragement Award” at a certain academic society, but I declined. My boss liked me, and I had contributed to his achievements. Consequently, I sensed an expectation of obedience to my boss in exchange for the award, and I wanted to escape that. Later, I took on a position supervising students at the university and was also involved in university administration. Throughout that process, I have always felt uneasy about honoring outstanding students and faculty members.

As the world’s oldest “award” recorded in history, we can cite the athletic prizes of ancient Greece. The Ancient Olympic Games (776 BCE–) bestowed honors, such as laurel and olive wreaths, or privileges upon the winners of competitions. In addition to pure admiration for their achievements, we can discern a national character that valued the robust physical strength necessary to maintain the state. Furthermore, in Athens, the City Dionysia (534 BCE–) was held as a theatrical competition. Here, figures such as Aeschylus (ca. 525 – ca. 456 BCE), Sophocles (ca. 496 – ca. 406 BCE), and Euripides (ca. 480 – ca. 406 BCE) were active. This practice serves as the origin of modern literary and film awards, which evaluate art through a judging process. Meanwhile, in Japan during the Heian period (794-1185), participants would divide into two groups to compose waka poems in a competition known as uta-awase, a poetry contest judged by a single judge. The uta-awase expanded as the Roppyakua-ban Uta-awase in 1193, a grand poetry contest featuring 600 pairs competing in two teams. Competitors vied for supremacy based on skill, erudition, aesthetic sensibility, and even political influence. Furthermore, following events such as the “Jishō-Juei Rebellion (1180–1185)” and the “Battle of Sekigahara (1600),” as well as other occasions, land, official ranks, swords, horses, and honorary titles were granted as rewards for military achievements. In other words, “awards” served as a means for those in power to integrate individuals into the governing structure. During the Edo period (1603-1868), the Tokugawa shogunate and the various domains established awards for filial piety, chastity, the encouragement of invention, and agricultural improvement.

The Nobel Prize is the most famous “award” today. It was established in 1895, the year before Alfred Nobel’s (1833–1896) death, in accordance with his will. Nobel wrote that his fortune was to be “distributed among those who have made the greatest contributions to the benefit of mankind.” In other words, despite the award originating from a place entirely detached from power structures, several recipients have declined it. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature, stating that “a writer must not be institutionalized.” Similarly, Lê Đức Thọ (1911–1990) declined the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, stating that “the regime wanted to co-opt me.” It is understood that they perceived a power structure within the selection process. While there have been no refusals in the natural sciences, Richard Feynman (1918–1988), who won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics, expressed discomfort with the Nobel Prize’s tendency to rank people. Similarly, Peter Higgs (1929–2024), who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the Higgs boson theory, expressed discomfort with the way the Nobel Prize brought his recognition to the forefront. At the Academy Awards (Oscars), Marlon Brando (1924–2004) declined the 1973 Academy Award for Best Actor for “The Godfather.” Instead, he sent a Native American activist and actress, Sacheen Littlefeather (1946-2022), to the ceremony to criticize Hollywood’s portrayal of Indigenous peoples and the discriminatory structures of American society. He, however, had received the same award for “On the Waterfront” in 1954.

In Japan, after winning the 1994 Nobel Prize in Literature, Kenzaburo Oe (1935–2023) declined an offer from the Japanese government to receive the Order of Culture. Oe made it clear that he “would not accept honors from the state.” This is understood not merely as anti-authoritarianism but as the result of complex, intertwined concerns regarding the state’s co-optation of culture, writers' independence, postwar democracy, and the imperial system. Additionally, the ceramic artist Kanjiro Kawai (1890–1966), who drew from the Mingei movement, declined the Order of Culture, the title of Living National Treasure, and a recommendation for membership in the Japan Art Academy. Based on the philosophy that “beauty resides not in fame but in daily life,” it is presumed that Kawai felt discomfort with the ranking of art, maintained a distance from institutionalized “art of authority,” and valued the perspective of the “anonymous artisan.” The painter Morikazu Kumagai (1880–1977) also declined the Order of Culture. Kumagai was extremely indifferent to worldly success; in his later years, he rarely left his garden and lived like a “hermit.” In his case, it is understood that this was less a matter of political ideology and more an embodiment of indifference to honor itself, a way of life that distanced him from the establishment, and a stance that separated his creative work from social success.

Viewed in this light, “awards” are inevitably accompanied by a structure of “praise → honor or reward → improvement of collective qualities → strengthening of governance.” While in many cases the purpose of establishing such awards is to praise the recipient’s social contributions, they inherently involve the ranking of people by people and thus cannot be entirely divorced from power structures. That said, I would like to offer my congratulations to Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi (b. 1945), a colleague of mine at the National Institute for Basic Biology, and Dr. Tasuku Honjo (b. 1942), with whom I collaborated for the University of Shizuoka, on their receipt of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2016 and 2018, respectively, and the Order of Culture in 2016 and 2013, respectively.