The Saga of My Research in Reproductive Biology

摘要

Of many interesting and perhaps most important concepts and theories I learned during my undergraduate years none struck me more than the concept of germ cells: "The child does not inherit its characters from the parental body, but from the germ-cell... as far as heredity is concerned, the body is merely a carrier of germ cells (Nussbaum-Weismann-Wilson)". This had a lasting and profound impact on me. When I was a zoology-major student at the Hokkaido University, Japan (1950-1953) all students had toaccomplish a research project during their third (the last) year before graduation to receive the B.Sci. degree. I wanted to study something related to animal embryology and was assigned the study of herring fertilization. This research, extended to 4 years, had to be discontinued because of a drastic decline in the herring population on the coast of Hokkaido perhaps due to overfishing. I obtained the D.Sci. (=Ph.D.) degree in 1960 after studying the life-cycle and reproduction of parasitic cirripeds,Rhizocephala. In those days in Japan graduates could not seek any positions at Universities by themselves. It had to be initiated by their Professors. Most of my classmates got jobs at other universities or research institutions. If I had been offered any position in Japan, I might have continued to work on fish and/or crustaceans.