Timeline Sunday 31 December 2006

Events on Sunday 31 December 2006 9

• 2002 – 2006 Chairman of Keidanren Served as chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Keidanren), Japan's most powerful business lobby, giving him influence over national economic policy. He used the platform to advocate for corporate reform and globalisation.
• 2002 – 2006 Sitcom and Supporting Roles Appeared in the television sitcom Lovers (2002) and took supporting roles across film and TV, steadily building his craft during years of relative obscurity.
• 2006 2006: Fernando Alonso Renault Alonso successfully defended his title, fending off Schumacher in a fierce battle that saw the German retire at the end of the season.
• 2006 Dancing with the Stars Competed on Dancing with the Stars, showing a self-deprecating charm that contrasted with his confrontational show persona.
• 2006 Doctoral Student Andrew Fire Wins Nobel Prize His former doctoral student Andrew Fire was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of RNA interference, a gene-silencing mechanism. The award underscored the extraordinary influence of Sharp's laboratory on the field of RNA biology.
• 2006 Franz Kafka Prize Received the Franz Kafka Prize, an international literary award. Several previous winners had gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, fuelling annual speculation about Murakami.
• 2006 Stepped Down Stepped down as Toyota's chairman after eleven years of leading the company. Under his tenure, Toyota had risen from Japan's largest automaker to one challenging General Motors for the global crown.
• 2006 Teddy Boy EP — Kavinsky Is Born Released the Teddy Boy EP on the French label Record Makers, introducing the fictional Kavinsky persona: a zombie driver who crashed his Ferrari Testarossa in 1986 and returned from the dead to make electronic music. The sound — pulsing synthesisers inspired by 1980s movie soundtracks, arcade games and sports cars — helped define what would become known as synthwave.
• 2006 Praemium Imperiale Became the first Japanese woman to receive the Praemium Imperiale, one of Japan's highest honours for internationally recognised artists. Also received the Order of the Rising Sun in the same year.