[1] Yatsu received his Ph.D. from Columbia University and was a pioneer in embryonic induction and laid the foundations for zoology research in Japan.

[3] Yatsu completed his undergraduate degree in zoology at the University of Tokyo, studying with Charles Otis Whitman, a pioneer of embryology in Japan.

[2] After graduating in 1900, he attended Columbia University where he studied marine invertebrate development and conducted experimental morphology research under Edmund Beecher Wilson and Thomas Hunt Morgan.

[4] He stayed six years in the US and Europe, where he worked with MDI Biological Laboratory[5] and published several important papers on cytology and embryology using egg cells where the nucleus had been experimentally removed.

[3] Some have suggested this change in focus was because the Japanese biology institutions did not accept his new and revolutionary experimental approaches for analyzing embryonic development.