Kazushi Ono awarded prestigious Asahi Prize

The Asahi Shimbun has announced Kazushi Ono amongst the five winners of their annual Prize for 2015 for their contributions to society. 

The Asahi Prize was established in 1929 to honour individuals and groups that have made outstanding accomplishments in the fields of academics and arts, and have greatly contributed to the development and progress of Japanese culture and society at large. The four other recipients for 2015 were 96-year-old haiku poet Tota Kaneko, chemist Shinji Murai and a pair of molecular biologists, Masayuki Yamamoto and Yoshinori Watanabe.

The Prize is regarded as one of the most prestigious prizes awarded by a nongovernmental entity. Many recipients of the Asahi Prize have later been honoured with a Nobel Prize or the Order of Culture decoration.