We cloned $hda1^+$ (histone deacetylase 1) of fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The hda1 of S. pombe was previously reported to encode for an active histone deacetylase (Rundlett et al., 1996; Olsson et al., 1998). The $hda1^+$ is phylogenetically related to the new open reading frame HOS2 of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and only shows a partial homology to the well-known histone deacetylase subclasses, RPD3 and HDA1. A single hda1 mRNA of 1.8 kb was detected at the same level in actively growing and nitrogen-starved cells. When highly over-expressed in S. pombe from an inducible promoter, $hda1^+$ inhibited cell proliferation and caused defects in morphology and cell division. The increased histone deacetylase activity was detected in hdar over-expressing cells. These results suggest that the Hda1p should function on the regulation of cell division possibly by (Allfrey, 1966) direct deacetylation of cytoskeletal (Wade et al., 1997) and cell division regulatory proteins, (Wolffe, 1997) or by controlling their gene expressions.