The 1968 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service

RESPONSE of  Seiichi Tobata
Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
31 August 1968, Manila, Philippines

Dr. Tobata regrets that illness prevents him from being here today and has asked that this message be read:

"I am deeply honored and pleased to have been chosen a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee.

Looking back upon my life, the first occasion when I was given an award was when I was a fourth grade pupil. At that time the head of the local government where I come from visited some 20 primary schools in the district and chose one excellent pupil from each school for an award. I still very well remember how proud my parents were when I danced home with my award. And the second award to bless me in my lifetime is a much greater one: the Ramon Magsaysay Award—an honor I never dreamed of receiving. Today my parents are no longer here to share this joy with me, although this time all my family, including my grandchildren, together with many of my friends are with me to share in this honor. Thank you very, very much for this great Award.

The citation covering this Award refers to 'incisive contributions toward modernization of Japan's agriculture and the sharing of its experience with developing nations.’ Indeed I must ask myself whether I really deserve this praise and reflect critically upon what I have done in the past.

Since the time when I was around 50 years of age, I began to doubt my capability as a scholar at the university; I was increasingly realizing that this role had its own limits. I mused what I should do to make the best use of what little capability I had. I concluded that I could more usefully exert myself to assist promising young men and provide them with better and greater opportunities for research and study, rather than myself continuing as a student. So, since the end of the Pacific War, I have taken posts as the first Director of the Research Institute of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry from 1946 to 1956, and then as the first Chairman of the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Technology Research Council of the same Ministry from 1956 to 1963. After that I served from 1958 to 1967 as the first President of the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs, the first postwar research institute of this sort in Japan to specialize in research on problems of developing nations. While not everything went entirely as I had aspired, I am satisfied on the whole with what has been done to date—above all, a good many specialists have been developed in all of these organizations and, not of lesser significance, I could find men of greater competence than I on whom to pass my jobs. Yet, who can say that these are 'incisive contributions?' I recall the geese from the Roman tale whose quacks awoke the sleepy Roman soldiers in the face of the enemy's night attacks, thus unwittingly saving Rome from possible defeat. My 'contributions' must in all probability be likewise indirect ones at the most. The Magsaysay Award Foundation was generous enough to honor an old Doctor Goose with this great Award! So, may I understand it to mean encouragement for me to raise louder quacks the rest of my life?

Modernization of Japan's agriculture, the various efforts in this direction during some 20 postwar years notwithstanding, seems to me to leave much to be desired. Moreover, under influences of the fast growing non-agricultural sectors, Japanese agriculture today is in a very precarious condition. Yet we have had some advancement. In respect to rice cultivation, for one thing, prewar volume of rice production had barely exceeded 10 million tons; today, with cultivated area of paddy fields having increased only slightly, the volume of production in the normal crop year is well over 13 million tons and in 1967, in particular, it reached a record level of 14.45 million tons. And this in spite of the sharp decrease in the agricultural population and the trend toward greater proportions of old-aged and women in the farm labor force.

I may mention three major factors which have contributed toward this progress.

First, there have been increased application of science and technology to agriculture and greater dissemination among farmers of the latest agricultural know-how. Institutions for agricultural experimentation and research now are oriented more toward practical problems that farmers face. Also, more organizations are disseminating among farmers—and particularly rural housewives—information and techniques for the improvement of farming and living conditions.

Second, the relations between agriculture and other industries have become closer. Industries producing chemical fertilizer, agricultural chemicals, farm machines and implements and processing food are now 'growth industries' and their contributions toward increased agricultural productivity are considerable.

Third, while the initiative and leadership of the government agencies have remained as strong as before the war, noticeable postwar phenomena are a stronger confidence in the progress of farming as well as a greater will-to-work among owner-farmers, especially among young farmers.

So much for what I would like to say for today's memorable occasion. I believe that some of the achievements thus far made in Japan may, with due corrections and modifications, prove applicable to agriculture, particularly to rice farming, in other Asian countries. Finally, let me say that I do always hope and pray, just as you all do, for further development of agriculture in this part of the world."