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The 2015 Kyoto Prize
2015
11 /11 Wed
Place：Kyoto International Conference Center
The 2015 Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize Laureates
Lecture topics
The Road I Have Taken: Spellbound by the Wonders of Research
Abstract of the lecture
I spent my younger days as just another ordinary boy. My parents owned a grocery store in Kurume City, Fukuoka Prefecture. My father was intent on giving his children a good education. When I was at my desk, he never told me what to do but, when I wanted to go out and play, he would immediately order me to do chores around the house. I recall that, during my elementary and junior high school years, I often sat at my desk, just to avoid doing household chores. I was a very curious and rather contrary child. As a junior high school student, I developed a love for reading. I would read, behind my parents’ back, anything I could lay my hands on, such as adventure stories. I never gave serious thought to a career direction until my last year of senior high school, just as I was about to go on to higher education. My father wanted me to become a pharmacist because he saw that as a secure and steady occupation. However, I wasn’t very keen on that line of work, so we reached a compromise whereby I would study applied chemistry in an engineering faculty. When it came time to do my graduation work during my senior year, I conducted research in laboratories for the first time. I would come up with a hypothesis, then run an experiment to test it. If my hypothesis proved to be incorrect, I would develop another hypothesis and try again. This iterative process to solve riddles fascinated me, and made me decide on choosing a career path focused on research and development. After attaining a Master’s degree from Kyushu University, I had the opportunity to pursue my doctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, on a Fulbright scholarship. That was back in 1960, when there was still a clear gap in living standard between Japan and the U.S.A. Then, I moved to the West Coast to become a Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology, before returning home in 1963 to join the Department of Organic Synthesis in Kyushu University’s Faculty of Engineering, where I would spend the next 36 years, until I reached the mandatory retirement age in 1999. As a student at Kyushu University, I worked on synthesis of new plastic materials. It was a time of rapid progress in petrochemistry, with new plastics constantly being developed. Synthesis of plastic materials continued to be my research topic as an Associate Professor but I was also interested in the intricate chemical processes that occur within living organisms. I chose enzyme models as my research focus, as that was where my two fields of interest overlapped. As an extension of that research, synthetic bilayer membranes came into being and then developed into chemistry based on molecular assembly.
Lecture topics
Extrasolar Planets: An Old Dream of Humanity—a Modern Reality of Astrophysics
Abstract of the lecture
More than 2000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Epicurus expressed his conviction about the plurality of worlds in the universe and the possibility that some of these worlds might have living species: The Universe is infinite ... It's not only the number of atoms, it's the number of worlds which is infinite in the Universe. There are an infinite number of worlds similar to ours and an infinite number of different worlds. (Epicurus 341 BC-270 BC) During the past two millennia the question of the plurality of worlds has been ever present in philosophical debates. Progress in astronomical instrumentation has allowed us to transform this old dream of humanity into a very active domain of modern astrophysics. It is a huge privilege for my colleagues and me to be part of this scientific adventure. Research is done by people! I will describe my own path to the discovery of 51 Pegasi b and the key contributions of my colleagues: Instrumentation and discoveries are not one-person activities. I will be happy to share with you some of the amazing discoveries made during the last 20 years and to discuss current and future research.
Lecture topics
Moving People: Dance as the Living Shape of Emotion
Abstract of the lecture
While recounting the stations, stages, events and experiences leading to my own development as a dancer, choreographer and artist, I would like, in my honorary address, to propose a personal definition of the art of dance as the living shape of emotion. With reference to events during my childhood and adolescence—such as the early discovery of a talent for drawing and painting, while at the same time sensing an unexplainable attraction to theatre dance and an irrepressible instinct to express feelings through my own movement—I would like to recount how these diverse strands of experience led to the realization of my calling as a choreographer and ballet director. Fragments of early education in Milwaukee Wisconsin—both in many forms of graphic arts as well as the dance lessons taken in a small ballet school—were at first separate activities. These studies, however, provided the solid basis of knowledge and technique necessary to later unite seemingly separate art forms while following a vocation. From the beginning, the urge to express the human situation as a performer on the stage was an inborn instinct. Later, during the study of English literature and Theatre arts at Marquette University in Milwaukee, the guidance of a Jesuit priest, who became my mentor, led me to that specific path, combining painting skills, literary education, spiritual conviction and dance technique which was choreography—the designing of human movement in space and time. At first, pursuing intensely a career as a ballet dancer, my creative urge was repressed. However, quite soon during my career as a soloist with the Stuttgart Ballet, I rediscovered the need to choreograph. The sudden and unexpected opportunity not only to make ballets but to direct a company of my own dancers in Frankfurt Germany led to experiments combining the knowledge and experience of my beginnings. Freedom in creating a unique repertoire, while training a chosen group of dance artists, combining movement, design, reference to literature, as well as an awareness and personal concern for the human condition, led to the development of a specific artistic philosophy. More than my own performing, dance creation—understood as the moment when the spontaneous invention of movement, inspired by interior feelings and enabled by the discipline of a learned technique, gives shape to deep emotions—became my primary concern. In an organized, "choreographed," human action the physical gives form to the spiritual and is communicated to witnesses who recognize some part of themselves—our own common humanity. The strands of education, experiment and life experience have been further woven together and constantly developed during many years of creation with my Hamburg Ballet. By creating movement designed to move people, dance continuously gives living shape to human emotion.
