Hata received three unsuccessful nominations for the Nobel Prize, one from Swiss surgeon Emil Kocher for Chemistry in 1911 and two by Japanese colleagues Hayazo Ito and G Osawa for Physiology or Medicine in 1912 and 1913, respectively.

Sahachiro Hata researched bubonic plague with Japanese bacteriologist and physician, Kitasato Shibasaburō, who co-discovered the infectious agent, a bacterium called Yersinia pestis.

[4] At the Congress for Internal Medicine at Wiesbaden in April 1910, Ehrlich and Hata shared their successful clinical results, which showed that arsphenamine treated syphilis in humans.

[7] In the wake of their discovery, some sections of European society condemned Hata's and Ehrlich's 'magic bullet' because they believed that syphilis was a divine punishment for sin and immoral acts, and thus the infected did not deserve to be cured.

[4] Salvarsan was established as the standard treatment for syphilis until it was replaced by the antibiotic penicillin after World War II, which has fewer adverse side effects.