Nobel Prize controversies been favored to receive the Prize, but a committee member was later quoted as saying that they would have been "too predictable, too popular." The 1974 prize was denied to Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and Saul Bellow in favor of a joint award for Swedish authors Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson—both Nobel judges and unknown outside their home country. Bellow won in 1976; neither Greene nor Nabokov took home the prize. The 1970 prize was awarded to Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who did not attend the ceremony in Stockholm for fear that the Soviet Union would prevent his return. His
The Nobel Peace Prize for Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution a corporate name. The Nobel committee spokesperson said that it was not possible for the citizens of an entire nation to be awarded the prize. Therefore, the application was rejected. Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo was concerned that Shinzō Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, was trying to reinterpret Article 9 and that this could be a precursor of armed confrontation. He nominated Kenzaburō Ōe, a former Nobel laureate in literature, and the , the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations for the Nobel Peace Prize list. In response, on January 15, 2015, the