On this occasion of the Fukuoka Prize 2023 Award Ceremony today, I wish to extend my heartfelt congratulations to Emeritus Professor Thongchai Winichakul, laureate of the Grand Prize, Associate Dean and Associate Professor Khatharya Um, laureate of the Academic Prize, and Mr. Zhang Lu, laureate of the Arts and Culture Prize.

It is a great pleasure for me to join you all at this Award Ceremony today, and to be able to gain more knowledge in person from the laureates here about their admirable activities and research.

The “Fukuoka Prize” is awarded to honor those who have made distinguished achievements in furthering the purposes of the Prize, which are to respect the diverse cultures that have been handed on over the generations in various parts of Asia, and contribute to their preservation and continuation, as well as to create new culture and promote academic research on Asia. Since its establishment, this Prize has played a remarkable role in acknowledging Asian cultures and demonstrating their value to the world.

Having frequently visited several countries myself, primarily in Southeast Asia, I have been intrigued by the wealth and depth of Asian cultures, including the distinctive history, languages, folklore, and arts that have been created and nurtured by Asia’s diverse climates and natural environments since antiquity. I strongly feel the importance of continuing to document, preserve, pass on, and also further develop this wealth and depth of cultural heritage, and of academic research enabling an in-depth understanding of Asia. I therefore believe that it is of great significance that this Prize communicates the value of Asian cultures, as well as their academic aspects.

I believe that the outstanding achievements of today's three laureates, and their significance, will become a valuable asset of humankind, when they are recognized not only in Asia, but more widely around the world by being shared with international society as a whole.

In closing my address, I would once again like to congratulate all the laureates, and I hope that this “Fukuoka Prize” will continue to enhance the understanding of various parts of Asia, as well as further promote peace and friendship throughout the international community.

Pursuing Democracy and Social Justice by Creating a New History which Will Become the Foundations of Our Future

I am honored to receive the Fukuoka Grand Prize. I consider the prize to be the recognition of my dedication to the studies of Thailand and Southeast Asia with two fundamental convictions. First, I believe that history of Thailand and the region is relevant to and can enrich the larger world. Secondly, history is powerful source of knowledge. It can be harmful too, as nationalist history has been in Thailand and in many countries.

Despite that, I believe that we can create a new type of history that can form the basis for a desirable future. I also appreciate the recognition of my commitment to democracy and justice in Thailand. Those friends who died in the massacre in 1976, remind me every day of this reality. I dedicate this award to them.

Unfortunately, forgetfulness and impunity remain too common. I recall the moment I first learned about receiving the award. I was at an event that told the stories of victims of another massacre of Malay Muslim people at a town in southern Thailand in 2004. Therefore, my gratification for receiving this award is with profound humility.

To me, the pursuit of knowledge and the commitment to democracy and justice need one another. Even the kind of knowledge that seems irrelevant to real life may be ground-breaking knowledge that leads to a better future. I am proud to both sit atop the ivory tower and be one of those from the streets.

The Fukuoka Prize is an inspiration to all of us, to do more, even in small ways, for humanity’s future.

Striving towards a Peaceful and Just World through My Experience and Compassion as a Refugee

I am extremely humbled by this honor and profoundly grateful for this award. As a migration studies scholar, I see this as a recognition, not only of my scholarly contributions, but of the critical nature of the issues that we face as a global community. As we speak, over 108 million people have been forced to flee their homes, making forced displacement one of the most pressing challenges of our time. When we think of our future, and of the UN goals for sustainable development, 14 of those 17 goals relate to migration in some way.

With this award, the City of Fukuoka and Japan are sharing with the world a visionary and empowering message that refugees, like me, are not just a crisis to be contained, or social burdens to avoid, but are people who can contribute to building a better society and a more just and peaceful world. Refugees know better than anyone else the importance of peace, for we are the living testament of the ravages of war. We have lost not only our homes, our countries, our families, but our world. We may enter our new homes empty handed, but we carry in our hearts the one gift that we have -the gift of compassion- the kind that only people who, in their darkest moments, have felt the pain of its absence or the warmth of its presence, can know.

History shows us that change begins with the ability to envision new possibilities. The Fukuoka Prize that recognizes people from so many different backgrounds for their commitment to peace and mutual understanding gives us this platform to think, imagine, and hopefully work together towards the kind of world that we want to leave behind for posterity.

Hoping to continue to exploring the emotions of people living together in Asia through film.

I am deeply honored to receive the Arts and Culture Prize of the Fukuoka Prize, but at the same time, I feel a strong sense of responsibility. I believe that this prize is proof of the recognition of my past works. It also embodies greater expectations and encouragement for my future creative activities. Keeping this in mind, I will continue sparing no effort to do achieve my absolute best.

I am a movie director. In a sense, I work in a world of fiction. Fortunately, this world of fiction, per se, interacts with the ever-changing real society. And this fiction world is also achieved through the collaboration of many people. Therefore, I sincerely believe that this prize is not given to me as an individual, but to the entire team that has worked with me until today.

The countries where I once worked, and where I am working now, include China, South Korea, Japan and Mongolia, which all geographically belong to “Asia”: the focus of this prize. I myself am Asian. Naturally, the Asian sentiment we call “qíngsù” runs throughout my body. However, strangely enough, I sometimes lose a clear picture of this “sentiment” ingrained in my body is, and I feel it to be something remote and out of my reach. I think this is why I work in the film industry. I recognize movie-making as an endeavor to explore the relationships between the known and the unknown, rather than capturing something already apparent.
I will continue to follow the path of movie-making and do nothing else but single-mindedly follow this path. However, I will do it much more modestly and sincerely than ever before.

Can you tell us about what made you look into maps in the course of your research?
Prof.Thongchai: My original intention was to understand why people were so obsessed with “nations”, nationalism, monarchies and royalism. I thought we needed to look at Thai history with a different viewpoint to create a different outlook of history. While looking for how to look at history without relying on political ideologies, I found that studying maps could be the key for my research. I acknowledged and summarized that our nation was created by these humble pieces of papers when I created my book on maps.

Can you share any lasting impressions you have of Japan?
Prof.Thongchai: I came to IDE-JETRO, which is an ideal place for research. They have excellent facilities, especially their libraries. Japan is into library loans and their library system is the best in the world. Because of these great facilities, I managed to finish a whole series of books during my research. Non-Western countries can learn a lot from Japan, given their long experience of interacting with the West, including the long history of higher education and academic research. Japan has an ability to engage with a vast variety of research in every field. Japan has developed unique areas of studies such as Southeast Asian studies that combine natural sciences, social sciences and humanities; you cannot find this anywhere else in the world.

What do you expect of a democracy and what do you want to convey in your work? 
Prof.Thongchai: In the past 10 years, the democracy in many countries especially in Southeast Asia have taken few steps back. Democracy is a system necessary to the complex society. Every society has become more and more complex. We need democracy more and stronger in the world.

Can you tell us why and how you decided to pursue political sciences?
Prof.Um: I did not think of majoring in political sciences from the beginning. The war and the revolution in Cambodia made me a stateless refugee in 1975. The politics were not kind to us. Coming out of the Cambodian genocide, like many others I had this question: “Why did this happened to us?” and this question has stayed with me. I had a chance to learn political science in a course at university, and I read the text of history of Southeast Asia that had little resonance to what we went through. It was almost a century of French colonization, textbooks in Cambodia continue to be largely written by non-Cambodians. Where are we in our own history? Where are our voices and who we are? I did not find the answers to my questions. But political science taught me what was missing and where to find it.

What do you hope to accomplish through your research?
Prof.Um: I realized that a lot of things have been left out of the text after majoring in political sciences. So I decided that we had to write our own history. The history will inform us as Cambodians. Who we are is so much more than the history: killing fields and just being refugees. These experiences steer my intellectual compass, and my work illuminates the complexity of our experiences to live the voices of those who were not given the chances to be heard and to render the presence visible. The political sciences have an ability to write and shine light on those hidden in the histories and all those are missing in the history. Trauma is also born out of historical amnesia and the illusiveness of the accountability of those missing in the history and those missing text in the text book.

Japanese speakers are not very familiar with the word sentiment of “qíngsù”, known as “jōsō” in Japanese, which you used in your speech. What is this Asian sentiment that you mentioned?
Mr. Zhang: “Qíngsù” denotes a very pure, beautiful, and simple inner feeling. We can also describe this as “chūxīn”: the feeling of original intention.” I have so far been exploring departure, original feelings, the sense of optimal distance between people and harmonious relationships. To quote great Chinese philosopher Confucius, this concept is described as “wēn liáng gōng jiǎn ràng” [one should be gentle, good, respectful, frugal, and modest] .These words describe excellent relationships between people, between groups and between countries. It is a phrase that describes modest, gentle and unassuming attitudes toward each other.

Why did you decide to make movies in Asian countries outside of China where you were born and raised, such as in South Korea and Japan? Also, what kinds of movies would you like to make in the future?
Mr. Zhang: Since becoming a film director, I search for a variety of shooting locations. I was born in northern China, and looking at the world today, I have noticed that different societies coexist harmoniously with each other. During the last several days I’ve spent in Fukuoka, I’ve heard Chinese and Korean being spoken. I feel the diversity of the people that are all living together. Movies closely reflect the joy, anger, and sorrow of the filmmakers and their peers. I believe it is necessary that everyone shares their own joy, anger, and sorrow with their peers. I suppose that, if otherwise, the distance between each other would increase, and we would feel more remote from the sentiments of others. I hope to express such things in my films.