There have been two Japanese Nobel laureates in chemistry, three in physics
, and one in the category of medicine or physiology. This relatively small
number has been attributed to shortcomings in Japanese science. The award o
f the Physics Prize in 1949 to Hideki Yukawa and to his colleague Sin'itiro
Tomonaga in 1965 gave public evidence of how Japanese could make outstandi
ng individual contributions to science. Paradoxically, the Prize also reinf
orced a belief that such men formed part of a traditional hierarchical syst
em. This essay examines how the Nobel Prize has been represented in Japan.