Since Hideki Yukawa in 1949, a total of 16 Japanese nationals have been named recipients of Nobel Prizes. In 2010, when the most recent Japanese winners were announced to receive prizes for chemistry, NHK interrupted its scheduled programming with a nyuusu sokuho (breaking news) announcement.
On Sept. 29, Shiga University associate professor Makoto Imai and six colleagues marched onto the stage at Harvard's Sanders Theater to receive a so-called Ig Nobel Prize for chemistry. The award was bestowed in recognition of "determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm."
The Ig Nobel Prizes date back to 1991, when Marc Abrahams, editor of a Harvard-based publication, The Annals of Improbable Research, organized an event to bestow recognition on scientists, inventors and others whose sometimes outrageously wacky research efforts "first make people laugh, and then make them think."