Arinami et al. (1994) reported an association between the Ser311/Cys311 variant of the DRD2 gene and schizophrenia in a Japanese population. We did not find statistically significant differences in the distribution of the allele frequencies between schizophrenics (103) and controls (97) in a case-control sample (chi 2 = 2.07; p = 0.150) or in 64 nuclear families with the haplotype relative risk (HRR) design (chi 2 = 0.13; p = 0.718). Our results seem to exclude a main involvement of this variant of the dopamine D2 receptor gene in the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia.