Nobel laureate injects new confidence into Japanese

Japan is in an upbeat mood with Kyoto University professor Shinya Yamanaka`s winning this year`s Nobel Prize for Medicine. The honor has given solace to a country suffering a series of crises such as territorial disputes with Korea and China, the fall of electronics giants Sharp and Sony, and downgrade of its sovereign rating.

Major news media in Japan, including the Asahi Shimbun, carried the news as their top story on the front page.

Yamanaka’s honor has made the Japanese people all the more excited because he won after a string of failures and despair. His success is encouraging his people, who are still reeling from the effects of last year`s massive earthquake and nuclear accident, to regain confidence.

The Nobel laureate entered medical school due to pressure from his father Shozaburo Yamanaka, who was running a factory that made sewing machine parts in Higashiosaka, known as Japan`s hub for small businesses.

The elder Yamanaka had told his son that he had no talent in business and had to find another career. This was rare in Japan, where inheriting the family business is a common practice.

As a student, Yamanaka earned the disgraceful nickname of “hospital for injured patients.” Learning judo in middle school, he suffered broken bones more than a dozen times. Probably for this reason, he expected to specialize in orthopedics until he graduated from the medical college of Kobe University in 1987.

As soon as he started his internship at the orthopedics department of National Osaka Hospital, however, he grew disappointed and depressed once again. He had no confidence in conducting surgical operation, having to painstakingly take two hours for a procedure that took others just 10 to 20 minutes.

He was so clumsy in giving hypodermic injections that even his father said he did “an extremely poor job.” His colleagues called him “jama naka,” or "an obstacle to surgery," using a term combining "jama" meaning “obstacle” in Japanese and his last name “Naka.”

Utterly disappointed, Yamanaka chose to pursue a career as a researcher. He decided to study hard-to-cure diseases as he was shocked to see and treat rheumatoid patients all of whose body joints were twisted. He went on to study at the Gladstone Laboratory of the University of California-San Francisco in 1993.

Upon returning to Japan, he got an assistant researcher position at the pharmacological laboratory of the College of Medicine at Osaka City University, only to be disappointed again. He was merely tasked with caring for test mice at a lab that had no money or discussion.

Suffering from depression, he mulled over giving up his research career and returning to clinical medicine. As his last chance in 1999, he applied for an assistant professorship at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, and got the post.

When he applied for a research grant from the Japan Science and Technology Agency, he was poised not to get it because the “research theme was considered outlandish.” But Tadamitsu Kishimoto, former president of Osaka University, came to his rescue, saying, “(Yamanaka) has the gut sense and courage that a young researcher would have.” In this way, Yamanaka started his research.

Accepting a post at Kyoto University in 2004, he participated in the Kyoto Marathon and ran the full race in March this year. To compensate for shortfalls in his research funds, he staged an online fundraiser on the condition that he finishes the full course. From Monday evening to noon Tuesday, when he was announced as the recipient of the Nobel Prize, a combined 187 people, including the families of patients with rare diseases, donated 1.61 million yen (21,000 U.S. dollars).

“My laboratory has more than 200 young researchers, but most of them are non-regular workers. Since I`m worried that talented human resources will leave for other areas due to fears over their future careers, I will continue to participate in marathons to raise funds for research,” Yamanaka said.

“I wasn`t an exemplary student at college. But it`s important to work hard and enjoy whatever you do. You cannot succeed if you do not fail nine times.”

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