Professor Ikata was born on 21 June 1934 in Tokushima, Japan. He graduated and received the degree of Medical Sciences from the University of Tokushima. He became an orthopedic spine surgeon and the professor and chairman of the department of Orthopedics of the University of Tokushima from 1976 and 2000.

As Japan had no good comprehensive management system for spinal cord injuries, he covered all aspects of the care of spinal cord injury himself. He also promoted the concept of ISCoS in Japan. His interest on spinal cord injury was not only on patients’ care, but also on epidemiology and basic science too.

He organized the 33rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Medical Society of Paraplegia in 1994 in Kobe, some months before the terrible earthquake. He drew a logo for the meeting that represented the broken spine and spinal cord and the globe. This logo became the base of the current logo of ISCoS.

At the time of his presidency between 2000 and 2004, the name of our society changed from the International Medical Society of Paraplegia to the International Spinal Cord Society, and the name of our journal from Paraplegia to Spinal Cord, which made the society and the journal more influential in order to help many more patients and to improve their treatment.

He had been a good athlete in his school days playing athletics and rugby. He was also one of the leaders of the sports medicine in Japan and was the president of the Japanese Orthopedic Association of Sports Medicine. His main interest in this field was prevention of the overuse disorders in children and he established the concept of spondylolysis being a fatigue fracture.

Professor Ikata died on 1 June 2013. He is greatly missed by his wife, Yuko and four children. He is also missed by his many students, colleagues, friends and admirers.