He studied medicine in Kyoto University, and took three years of residency in neurosurgery. He was given PhD from Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, and also passed the examination for Japanese Board of Neurological Surgeon in 1993. He started research on neural stem cells in Fred H. Gage's laboratory at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow for two years. Since he came back to Kyoto in 1997, he has been working as a clinical neurosurgeon but continuing research work as well. Now he is a lecturer of the department of neurosurgery, performing mainly functional neurosurgery including deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease patients, and also developing a method of cell transplantation using ES cells for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.