Mr. Hwang Byung-ki is a virtuoso player of, and composer for the kayagum, a traditional Korean musical instrument. In the subtle and imaginative works he has composed and performed on this instrument, he has developed a highly original world that embraces both a contemporary feel and an international outlook while at the same time preserving the tradition of kayagum.

Mr. Hwang was born in Seoul in 1936. At the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 he was evacuated to Pusan, and there he first encountered the kayagum. The beautiful tones of the music enchanted him. From 1951 to 1959, he learnt to play the kayagum at the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. When the Faculty of Korean Traditional Music was created in the College of Music, Seoul National University, in 1959, he began teaching there. Later on, he taught at the School of Korean Traditional Music, Ewha Womans University as a professor from 1974 to 2001, during which period he traveled to many places across the world, such as Europe and the US, to give concerts. Currently he is professor emeritus at Ewha Womans University, and also he has been since 2006 the Artistic Director of the National Orchestra of Korea.

On the one hand, he has contributed enormously to the Korean music world by nurturing young talent at university, and on the other, his own outstanding talent as performer and composer has earned him a number of prestigious prizes. These include the Grand Prize of KBS Korean Classical Music Competition in 1957, the National Music Prize in 1965, the Jungang Cultural Grand Prize in 1992, the Bang Il-young Traditional Music Award in 2003, and the National Academy of Arts Prize in 2006. The high regard in which he is held both abroad and at home reflects his pioneering contributions to the field of traditional music.

Mr. Hwang calls himself a traditional performer and modern composer. He has a profound understanding of tradition, and furthermore he exhibits a creativity that goes beyond tradition and his own personal style. Chimhyang-moo (1974) -- which has been called the turning-point in his musical development -- was created through going back to the court music developed under the Korean dynasties, when traditional Korean music was formed, and attempting to recreate the time when the Silla dynasty was in contact with Central Asia. In this piece, a delicate beauty and a profound mystery are exquisitely presented. His celebrated masterpiece Labyrinth (1975), an avant-garde dismantling of conventions, also broke new ground, continuing his determination both to develop and to challenge traditional forms, by introducing contemporary and universal themes.

Mr. Hwang is a true heir to the kayagum tradition, who plays it with deep understanding as well as superb technique, and who composes music that has reached out from Korea across Asia and to the rest of the world, overcoming the barriers created by tradition and by fashion. Both as a performer and a composer, he has achieved truly impressive results, and therefore, he indeed deserves the Grand Prize of the Fukuoka Prize.

• 14:30 - 16:30, Sun., September 19
• IMS Hall(with a seating capacity of 400)

Through two years of field work in Malaysian villages and thoroughgoing research into the relevant literature, Prof. James C. Scott illuminated the mentality of small farmers and peasants and explained the logic behind their subsistence security, a logic which led to rebellions against excessive interventions and exploitation by the state and landowners, and subsequently to the formation of social movements. His insights crossed both regional boundaries in Asia and disciplinary boundaries in social science, and gave rise to the interdisciplinary debate about the 'moral economy'.

He later concluded that a double-faced attitude toward authority was widely visible among subordinate groups subject to domination and oppression through slavery, serfdom or caste, as a basis for rebellion; he showed that behind the scenes, beyond the reach of authority, there was a capacity to criticize behaviour and a potential for reformation. Working both from logical deduction and from case studies, he persuasively argued that local practical knowledge and traditional practices must be well understood and respected in order to avoid further repetition of the failures experienced by so many state-run social engineering projects intended to improve the life of the poor.

His analysis of the dynamics of modern confrontations between the ruling authorities and a rebellious populace emerges from an intellectual odyssey which began in Southeast Asia; he has returned the same region in his most recent book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009). He presented the bold argument that people who have taken refuge in mountainous areas in protest against state-imposed taxation and compulsory labor have established and maintained a flexible and adaptable society and culture designed to protect their freedom and autonomy. This has already provoked much vigorous debate.

Prof. Scott obtained his Ph.D from Yale University in 1967. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin until 1976, when he became a Professor of Political Science at Yale University; since 1991 he has also been Director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale. He has guided many of the younger generation in his field. His analysis of the relationship between rulers and ruled within a modern state has remained focused upon concepts such as subsistence, domination and resistance, the politics of daily life, and anarchism. His investigations of the values and worldview of people made vulnerable by their state of subordination has yielded profound insights, which have important interdisciplinary implications for the fields of anthropology, agrarian studies and history.

Prof. Scott's work has thus extended beyond its starting point in Southeast Asian regional studies and political science into other adjacent academic fields, and has excited these disciplines and stimulated many productive arguments. This contribution makes him a worthy recipient of the Academic Prize of the Fukuoka Prize.

• 18:30 - 20:30, Fri., September 17
• IMS Hall(with a seating capacity of 400)

Prof. Kazuko Mori, a specialist in political science, is a leading figure in the study of contemporary China in Japan. The scope of her academic work covers Chinese politics, the history of Chinese international relations, and ethnic issues in China. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining these three areas, she has presented a comprehensive outline of modern China while contributing greatly to the construction of the methodological framework that now serves as common foundation for Asian Studies.

Born in Tokyo in 1940, Prof. Mori graduated from Comparative History Course, Division of Liberal Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Letters and Education, at Ochanomizu University (Asian History) in 1962. A succession of high quality academic papers established her as a pioneer female scholar. She was a Senior Fellow of the Japan Institute of International Affairs, a Research Fellow at the Consulate-General of Japan in Shanghai, and taught at the University of Shizuoka and Yokohama City University, before she was appointed in April 1999 to a professorship at Waseda University, in the Faculty of Political Science and Economics, and the Graduate School of Political Science, where she conducted research and taught Asian Studies, Chinese politics and diplomacy, and international relations in East Asia until March 2010.

In one of her major works, Politics in Contemporary China, she analyses the functions of and relations between political parties, the state and the military from the different perspectives of Chinese socialism, Chinese development issues, and Chinese tradition by employing a comparative political-scientific methodology, which has been praised as one of the highest achievements of Chinese Studies in Japan. Ethno-Nationalism in Contemporary China presents a systematic analysis, from the perspective of political science and international relations, of the history of minorities in peripheral areas, such as the Uighurs, during the process of state integration and national identity formation in China since the 1940s. This work has been acclaimed for the new perspectives which emerge upon China's place in international politics. In Sino-Japanese Relations: From the Post War to a New Era, she returns to the past and provides a clear evidentiary foundation, on the basis of which she reconsiders the current Sino-Japanese relationship, where interdependence and mutual distrust are so entangled, and provides an eloquent statement of the requirements for a future relationship.

Prof. Mori has not only produced much outstanding work as a scholar, but has also contributed significantly to the creation of a network for Chinese and Asian Studies, and to the development of international academic exchange schemes. For example, as a program leader of a project funded by Grand-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priorities, "Structural Change in Contemporary China" (1996-98), she headed a joint research project involving more than seventy China specialists, and published the outcome in an eight volume work, Structural Change in Contemporary China as a Great Power. She was also a program leader of Waseda University's "Contemporary Asian Studies" Project, a Twenty-First Century Center of Excellence (COE) Project funded by the Ministry of Education, Japan (2002-06), and worked energetically to promote Asian Studies in Japan. Because of these contributions to the development of the academic community, and because of her outstanding achievements, Prof. Mori is a worthy winner of the Academic Prize of the Fukuoka Prize.

• 17:00 - 19:00, Sat., September 18
• IMS Hall(with a seating capacity of 400)

Mr. Ong Keng Sen is one of the most prolific theatre directors in the world. His productions are shaped by modern sensibility which brings together Asian and European performance traditions in striking way. He has won international acclaim as a director. He has been a pioneer at the international frontier of theatrical art: his plays do not disregard tradition, but still place a premium on physicality, and remain true to the spirit of pop art.

Mr. Ong was born in Singapore in 1963 He graduated from the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, in 1989. In 1988, while still at university, he joined ‘TheatreWorks’ as an artistic direcor, and that was the beginning of his career as an artistic director. From 1993 to 1994, he studied at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and obtained an M.A. in Performance Studies. Around this time, his productions were staged in the US, Europe and Japan, and his name became well known to the world. Since then he has been offered commissions by major theatres and arts festivals in Asia and Europe, and has directed a great variety of plays. In 2003, he received the Singapore Cultural Medallion Award (Theatre).

In all his activities, Mr. Ong is always asking himself the fundamental question, 'What does it mean, today, to live as an artist?' As a theatre director, he has fixed his gaze at the geographically vast expanse of Asia and the Western world, and also across a long stretch of historical memory. The Flying Circus Project, which has been in continuous development since 1996, has provided a landmark opportunity for performers from diverse backgrounds, both Asian and Western artists of classical and contemporary performing art as well as those from non-theatrical backgrounds, to work together. This gave birth to innovative stage adaptations of Shakespearean plays such as Lear (1997-99) and Desdemona (2000-01), which was performed at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum. In Sandakan Threnody (2004) and The Continuum: Beyond the Killing Fields (2001-10), which are classified in a new genre called 'docu-performances', he traced the records of warfare in modern Asia and presented these on stage. Then the stage became a thrilling space where the audience, too, could inspect Asian history through a sharply critical lens.

Mr. Ong Keng Sen is one of the leaders of the international performing world, whose work has successfully broken down the simplistic dualism which traditionally separate the classical from the contemporary arts, and the East from the West. By thus transcending barriers between genres and nations, he has contributed greatly to a revaluation of the fundamental and universal power of art through his sharp awareness of contemporary issues. For this contribution, he is truly worthy of the Arts and Culture Prize of the Fukuoka Prize.

• 13:30 - 15:30, Sat., September 18
• IMS Hall(with a seating capacity of 400)