搞笑诺贝尔奖背后的深意

    如果你想搞清楚人造乳房能否经受住滚烫的温泉的考验，熊猫粪便是否会溶解垃圾，机器人能否进入大学这些稀里古怪的问题，那么日本将是一个满足你好奇心的好去处。

    如此隐秘的事情正是价值1,300亿美元的日本研发产业某些分支乐而不疲的研究对象。上周，一年一度的搞笑诺贝尔奖（Ig Noble）在哈佛大学（Harvard University）举行颁奖仪式时，组织者马克•亚伯拉罕将给予这些日本研究人员以无声的感谢。他说，倘若没有他们，这个奖根本就办不起来。“这么长时间以来，日本一直在推荐不容我们错过的研究成果。”他还暗示说，对于日本来说，今天又将是一个喜获丰收的日子。

    他指出，这些研究在试图解决问题，带动产业发展的同时，获得了某种出人意料的深度，还产生了一个额外的好处：给人们带来会心一笑。

    这个奖项目前已经有22年的历史。亚伯拉罕说，期间，就资历而论，有两个国家迄今为止的表现可谓出类拔萃。“日本和英国持续不断地涌现出数量可观的搞笑诺贝尔奖得主，”他说。“我认为，出现这种局面的部分原因在于两国文化所共有的某种特质。大多数其他国家都容不下怪人。与这些国家恰恰相反的是，日本和英国以本国的怪人而自豪。”

    日本的实际情况或许正是如此。这是一个将二战后的贫瘠转化为世界第二大经济体（往往要归功于坚韧的国民精神，以及能工巧匠的创造力）的民族，另类发明家的确在寻求灵感的日本工薪一族的心目中占有特殊的分量。日本有一些颇受欢迎的电视节目专门呈现这些孤僻的发明家及其发明成果。这些发明当时看起来似乎有些稀奇古怪，但很快就会成为引领风潮，或者具有革命性的产品。任天堂公司（Nintendo）的Wii和电子宠物（Tamagotchi）就是两个经典的例子。

    诺贝尔奖获得者（迄今为止共18位）在日本也备受推崇。日本希望在未来50年中再涌现出30位诺奖得主。为了达成这项目标，日本每年投入的研发资金占国民生产总值（GNP）的比重（3.47% ）比任何其他国家都要高——美国的这项比率为2.81%，中国为1.55%。日本的研发预算额度在全球位列第三位，并且拥有逾70万名研究人员。

    颇具讽刺意味的是，正是这种带有迫切感，郑重其事的创新策略，激发出了相当多非传统的研究，而且在不经意间产生出滑稽的效果。“在我看来，这么多日本人获得搞笑诺贝尔奖的原因在于日本研究人员具有一种严苛的实事求是精神，”筑波大学（Tsukuba University）首席科学发起人渡边正孝指出。筑波大学是日本最主要的创新中心之一。

    “这种悖论是马克•亚伯拉罕的幽默感造成的。日本的获奖者们并不认为自己的研究是很滑稽的事情。但马克却发现这些研究成果非常搞笑。”承认一种“荒唐失效感”或许更加接近这个岛国的现实：在日本，讽刺是一个跟和尚烧烤同样稀罕的事物。

    自22年前，组织者拉拢真正的诺贝尔奖得主颁发这些“令人笑掉大牙”的奖项以来，日本人已经轻而易举地斩获了15项搞笑诺贝尔奖。与真正的诺贝尔奖一样，搞笑诺贝尔奖也划分为包括和平、生物和物理在内的类别。这个发明奖项的目的是向意想不到的后果之神致敬，因此，2004年的和平奖颁发给卡拉OK的发明者井上大佑堪称实至名归，因为他“为人类提供了一种学会彼此容忍的全新方式。”

    If you ever wondered if artificial breasts can survive scalding hot springs, whether panda dung will dissolve garbage, and if a robot could enter university, then Japan would be the place to satisfy your curiosity.

    Such esoteric research is meat and drink to certain branches of the $130 billion research and development industry here. To which, when the annual Ig Noble prizes are presented at Harvard today, its organizer Marc Abrahams will give silent thanks. He couldn't do without them, he says. "Japan has been putting up stuff for so long it's hard to miss," he says hinting today will be another bumper year for Japan.

    He refers to research that, while attempting to solve problems and drive industry, has achieved some crooked profundity while generating the added bonus of making people smile.

    So far, in the prize's 22-year-history, two nations stand out amongst others in eligibility says Abrahams. "Japan and the UK both have consistently produced impressive numbers of Ig Nobel Prize winners," he says. "I think that's partly due to something the two cultures share. Most other countries punish their eccentrics. Japan and the UK, in contrast, are proud of their eccentrics."

    That certainly might be true of Japan. For the people who transformed post-war penury into the world's number two economy -- often thanks to persistence and tinkerers' ingenuity -- offbeat inventors do have a special place in the heart of the nation's inspiration-seeking salarymen. Some popular TV here is devoted to lone inventors and their innovations that seemed quirky at the time but quickly become novel or breakthrough. Nintendo's (NTDOY) Wii or the Tamagotchi are two examples.

    Noble prize winners (18 so far) are appreciated, too. Japan wants to produce 30 Nobel prize winners over the next 50 years. And in that quest spends more on R&D as part of gross national product than any other (3.47% of GNP compared to US 2.81% and China 1.55%). While Japan has the third largest budget globally for R&D and over 700,000 researchers.

    Ironically it is this driven, earnest approach to innovation that ingenuously sparks a fair bit of unconventional research, and the unintentionally funny. "I think the reason why we have a disproportion (of Japanese Ig Noble winners) is the strict matter-of-fact-ness of Japanese researcher," points out Masataka Watanabe, chief science promoter for one of Japan's great centers of innovation -- Tsukuba University.

    "Such a paradox is caused by Marc Abraham's sense of humor. Japanese laureates don't see their research as funny. But Marc has found funny things in them." This admission to a sense-of-the-absurd-failure might be closer to the truth in the land where irony is as rare as a Zen barbecue.

    The Japanese have so far romped 15 Ig Noble prizes after 22 years of roping in actual Noble prize winners to give out the tounge-placed-firmly-in-cheek awards, which like the real Nobles are divided into categories including Peace, Biology, and Physics. As a type of invention's homage to the god of unintended consequences, Daisuke Inoue's 2004 Peace prize for inventing karaoke and "providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other," was apt.