Winners of the Fukuoka Prize Announced

The Fukuoka prize (福岡アジア文化賞) has been established by the Yokatopia Foundation and the Japanese city of Fukuoka. The prize is a follow up to the 1989 exhibition “Yokatopia”, an Asia-Pacific exhibition focused on the interaction in the Asia-Pacific region.

Since 1990 the Fukuoka Prize has honoured outstanding achievements by individuals, groups and organizations, which preserve and create the unique and diverse culture of Asia. The overall aim of the prize is to foster and increase awareness of the value of Asian culture, as well as to establish a framework within which Asians can learn from, and share with each other.

Visits in schools across the region have been arranged since 1999 in order to deliver special lectures and talks. Over the past few years, there have also been non-Asian nominees on the list; as long as they protect and promote the rich Asian cultures and languages they can be nominated, regardless of whether they come from France, the USA or Ireland,

The winners of the Fukuoka Prize for 2015 are as follows: 

Historian Thant Myint-U has been named the recipient of the Grand Prize for writing accessible history of his ancestral homeland of Myanmar. He has also been active in the preservation of the country’s historic buildings and is committed to sustainable urban planning.

Ramachandra Guha, a leading Indian historian, is the recipient of the Academic Prize. His works present the complex history of India, its great diversity of languages, ethnicities, religions and castes.

The Arts and Culture Prize goes to Minh Hanh of Vietnam for her contemporary fashion designs that fuse ao dai, a Vietnamese national costume, with the traditional embroideries and fabrics common among Vietnamese ethnic minorities. The designer has organized fashion shows all over the world – and she has been an important force behind young designers and the fashion market in Vietnam.