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Part VI includes Chapter 13 (by Masanori Kaji) about Japan, one of the few countries outside the Western world that participated in modern scientific research in the nineteenth century. The discovery of the periodic law in 1869-1871 and its dissemination in the 1880s coincided with the institutionalization of chemistry in Japan after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. This factor helped facilitate the appreciation of the periodic system as a basis for chemistry there. Most of the first-generation Japanese chemistry professors accepted without much skepticism the periodic law as one of the recent developments in chemistry in Europe. Furthermore, around this time, Japanese chemists began to contribute to the study of the periodic system. For instance, Ogawa Masataka announced the discovery of a new element called nipponium in 1908, which much later turned out to be rhenium. 

RESEARCH ON THE PERIODIC SYSTEM OGAWA MASATAKA S DISCOVERY OF NIPPONIUM ... 

Around this same time a Japanese chemist made a discovery based on the periodic law Ogawa Masataka (1865-1933) claimed in 1908 to have discovered a new element, which he called nipponium. °... 

Figure 13.3 Ogawa Masataka as president of Tohoku Imperial University arotmd 1924. With permission from Tohoku University Archives.

Around this time Japanese chemists started to contribute to research related to the periodic system. Ogawa Masataka announced the discovery of a new element, called nipponium in 1908, which much later turned out to be rhenium. 

Ogawa Masataka, Preliminary Note on a New Element in Thorianite, Journal of the College of Science, Imperial University, Tokyo, Japan 25(1908) Article 15,1-11, onp. 1. 

Ogawa Masataka as president of Tohoku Imperial University around... 

Japanese chemist Masataka Ogawa discovers rhenium, but erroneously assigns it to atomic number 43, instead of its correct atomic number of 75. He names the element nipponium, but his research is forgotten and ignored for many years. 

The name is from the Rhineland in Germany. In 1908, the Japanese chemist Masataka Ogawa (1865-1933) discovered this element and called it nip-ponium, but he incorrectly assigned it to periodical space 43. In 1925, the research team of Walter Noddack (1893-1960), Ida Eva Tacke (1896-1978, later Ida Noddack), and Otto Berg (1873- ) extracted 1 g of rhenium from molybdenite ore and correctly characterized its properties. Rhenium is relatively rare. Its main uses are in laboratory equipment such as spectrographs, in filaments for photoflash lamps, and in some specialty electrical equipment. 

For example, a Japanese chemist, Masataka Ogawa, claimed to have isolated an element that he called nipponium and that he believed to be Mendeleevs eka-manganese.2 Moseley was able to show that this claim was unfounded since the sample provided by Ogawa did not show the required atomic number when subjected to Moseley s spectral analysis. Similarly, coronium, nebullium, casseopeium, and asterium, which appeared on many early periodic tables, often between hydrogen and lithium, could all be dismissed as spurious elements. ... 

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