With Sakaguchi Shimon, a distinguished professor at Osaka University in Japan, selected as the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine laureate on the 6th (local time), Japan has produced its 30th laureate. Japanese laureates, including those who later acquired foreign nationality, number 29 individuals and one organization.
According to NHK on the 6th, this is the 30th Japanese Nobel laureate since Dr. Yukawa Hideki received the physics prize in 1949.
By field, there are 12 in physics, eight in chemistry, six in physiology or medicine, two in literature, and one person and one organization in peace. Japan had the atomic bomb victims' organization "Nihon Hidankyo" receive the peace prize last year, and with Professor Sakaguchi selected for the physiology or medicine prize this year, the country has earned the honor of laureates for two consecutive years.
In the natural sciences, this is the first award in four years since Dr. Manabe Syukuro won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2021. Japan's first Nobel and first natural science Nobel went to Yukawa in 1949. The first chemistry prize for a Japanese laureate was Kenichi Fukui in 1981, and the first physiology or medicine prize was Susumu Tonegawa in 1987.
By period, the number of Japanese laureates surged from 2000 onward, when the results of investments in basic science became prominent. From 2000 to 2002, for three consecutive years, Japanese laureates received the chemistry prize. In 2008, including a simultaneous win in physics, as many as four Japanese laureates emerged in a single year.