2013 年 47 巻 3 号 p. 105-115
It is often documented that geochemistry has been established in the West in early 1920s. Since the same period or earlier, books and literatures on the developing geochemistry have been imported to Japan. Jun-ichi Takahashi, who met Vernadsky in Paris in 1924 and later translated his textbook "La Géochimie" to Japanese language in 1933, has studied such imported publications and has used "Chikagaku" as a Japanese equivalent for "Geochimistry" since early 1920s. Separately, Yuji Shibata, who is respected as a founder of Japanese geochemistry, was inspired by Vernadsky's "La Géochimie" (1924) and contributed an article introducing geochemistry as a promising new discipline to a newspaper "Kokumin-Shinbun" in 1926. In this article, he coined "Chikyukagaku" as a Japanese equivalent for "Geochemistry". Since then, the term "Chikyukagaku" became popular in Japanese scientific community. Although Takahashi claimed that the Japanese equivalent for "Geochemistry" was not "Chikyukagaku" but "Chikagaku" in his review paper in 1929, it was too late. Finally, Takahashi had to change his mind to use "Chikyukagaku" on the title of the Japanese translation version (1933) of Vernadsky's "La Géochimie".
