Founded in 1878, the Zoological Society of Japan is known to be one of the oldest and successful academic societies in Japan, and has supported scientific activities across a wide-range fields of areas associated with basic zoology.

The Zoological Society of Japan is an academic society aimed at the advance and dissemination of animal scientific research. Members, starting with researchers and graduate students affiliated with universities and research institutes, consist of teaching staff at elementary, middle and high schools, and the number of members has reached 2,700.

Shigeru Kuratani received his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Department of Zoology at Kyoto University. He spent the period from 1988 to 1991 working in experimental embryology in the Department of Anatomy at the Medical College of Georgia before moving to the Biochemistry Department, Baylor College of Medicine, where he focused on molecular embryological research. He returned to Japan in 1994 to take a position as associate professor at the Institute of Medical Embryology and Genetics in the Kumamoto University School of Medicine. He moved to Okayama University to assume a professorship in the Department of Biology in 1997, where he remained until he was appointed team leader at the CDB in 2001. He was appointed Group Director at CDB from 2005 to 2014. Since 2014, he is Chief Scientist at RIKEN.