『Contemporary Thai History from the Welcoming of KING:Bhumibol’s Provincial Visits and His Films.』（minervashobo　2023）
Chie Sakurada
（Assistant Professor Department of Global Studies, Faculty of Global Studies, Sophia University.）
It is my great honor to receive the prestigious Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the people at the foundation and the selection committee members. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who have contributed in various ways to the publication of this book.
This book is a significant contribution to the understanding of the monarchy in Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia where the former King Bhumibol Adulyadej held the throne for 70 years until he passed away in 2016. His reign had a profound influence not only on politics and the economy but also on the people’s lives. Despite the common belief that “respect from the people” was the key to his authority, little research has been conducted on the subject due to the existence of charges of disrespect. This study aims to fill that gap and comprehensively understand the monarchy’s role in Thai society.
In this book, I focus not on whether former King Bhumibol Adulyadej actually earned the respect of the people but on the development of a strong social norm, which could be called a myth, that ”the people must revere the King” and that ”King Bhumibol Adulyadej is a wonderful person and King,” to clarify the development of a strong social norm. To explain these, I focused our analysis on the spread of newsreels called “King’s Films.”
I wrote this book with the hope that readers will get a concrete image of how people viewed the King from the 1950s to the 1970s and what society was like at that time. I will leave it to the reader to decide whether I achieved this, but I’m confident I could make a specific contribution to documentation.
In Thailand, the royal family has become one of the symbols of political conflict, which has continued since the late 2000s. So, the royal family is attracting attention in a different way than it did in the past. Especially from 2019 onward, criticism of the royal family from the people, which had previously been taboo, will now be directed squarely at the royal family, and the Thai royal family has reached a turning point. At the same time, looking at Japan and the rest of the world, the significance of monarchies in each country in the modern era and their relationship with the people are also being questioned. I hope this book will provide some perspectives on contemporary monarchies, not limited to the case of Thailand.　Thank you.

Profile
She is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Global Studies, Sophia University.She received her M.A. from the Graduate School of Global Studies, Sophia University, in 2012. She completed a doctoral program at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, Kyoto University in 2017, and received a Ph.D. (Area Studies) in 2019.
She was an Affiliated Assistant professor of Kyoto University, International Staff of Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), and a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science(RPD) before assuming her current position.
One of her important works was The People Behind the Throne: A Record of King Bhumibol’s Struggle for Cinema and Provincial Visits. (2018, Fukyosya.), and the Translation book Bai Maai thi Haai Pai.( by Chiranan Pitpreechar, joint translator is Inuhiko YOMODA. 2017, Minato-no-hito)