Bismuth in the context of "Wolframite"

Mining in Japan is minimal because Japan does not possess many on-shore mineral resources. Many of the on-shore minerals have already been mined to the point that it has become less expensive to import minerals. There are small deposits of coal, oil, iron and minerals in the Japanese archipelago. Japan is scarce in critical natural resources and has been heavily dependent on imported energy and raw materials. There are major deep sea mineral resources in the seabed of Japan. This is not mined yet due to technological obstacles for deep sea mining.

In 2019, Japan was the 2nd largest world producer of iodine, 4th largest worldwide producer of bismuth, the world's 9th largest producer of sulfur and the 10th largest producer of gypsum.

Cobalt is a chemical element; it has symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, somewhat brittle, gray metal.

Cobalt-based blue pigments (cobalt blue) have been used since antiquity for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass. The color was long thought to be due to the metal bismuth. Miners had long used the name kobold ore (German for goblin ore) for some of the blue pigment-producing minerals. They were so named because they were poor in known metals and gave off poisonous arsenic-containing fumes when smelted. In 1735, such ores were found to be reducible to a new metal (the first discovered since ancient times), which was ultimately named for the kobold.

Diamagnetism is the property of materials that are repelled by a magnetic field; an applied magnetic field creates an induced magnetic field in them in the opposite direction, causing a repulsive force. In contrast, paramagnetic and ferromagnetic materials are attracted by a magnetic field. Diamagnetism is a quantum mechanical effect that occurs in all materials; when it is the only contribution to the magnetism, the material is called diamagnetic. In paramagnetic and ferromagnetic substances, the weak diamagnetic force is overcome by the attractive force of magnetic dipoles in the material. The magnetic permeability of diamagnetic materials is less than the permeability of vacuum, μ₀. In most materials, diamagnetism is a weak effect which can be detected only by sensitive laboratory instruments, but a superconductor acts as a strong diamagnet because it entirely expels any magnetic field from its interior (the Meissner effect).

Diamagnetism was first discovered when Anton Brugmans observed in 1778 that bismuth was repelled by magnetic fields. In 1845, Michael Faraday demonstrated that it was a property of matter and concluded that every material responded (in either a diamagnetic or paramagnetic way) to an applied magnetic field. On a suggestion by William Whewell, Faraday first referred to the phenomenon as diamagnetic (the prefix dia- meaning through or across), then later changed it to diamagnetism.

A native metal is any metal that is found pure in its metallic form in nature. Metals that can be found as native deposits singly or in alloys include antimony, arsenic, bismuth, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, indium, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, rhenium, tantalum, tellurium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, and zinc, as well as the gold group (gold, copper, lead, aluminium, mercury, silver) and the platinum group (platinum, iridium, osmium, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium). Among the alloys found in native state have been brass, bronze, pewter, German silver, osmiridium, electrum, white gold, silver-mercury amalgam, and gold-mercury amalgam.

Only gold, silver, copper and the platinum group occur native in large amounts. Over geological time scales, very few metals can resist natural weathering processes like oxidation, so mainly the less reactive metals such as gold and platinum are found as native metals. The others usually occur as isolated pockets where a natural chemical process reduces a common compound or ore of the metal, leaving the pure metal behind as small flakes or inclusions.

A pnictogen (/ˈ(p)nɪktədʒən/; from Ancient Greek πνίγω (pnígō) 'to choke' and -gen 'generator') is any of the chemical elements in group 15 of the periodic table. Group 15 is also known as the nitrogen group or nitrogen family. Group 15 consists of the elements nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), arsenic (As), antimony (Sb), bismuth (Bi), and moscovium (Mc).

The IUPAC has called it Group 15 since 1988. Before that, in America it was called Group VA, owing to a text by H. C. Deming and the Sargent-Welch Scientific Company, while in Europe it was called Group VB, which the IUPAC had recommended in 1970. (Pronounced "group five A" and "group five B"; "V" is the Roman numeral 5.) In semiconductor physics, it is still usually called Group V. The "five" ("V") in the historical names comes from the "pentavalency" of nitrogen, reflected by the stoichiometry of compounds such as N₂O₅. They have also been called the pentels.

Heavy metals is a controversial and ambiguous term for metallic elements with relatively high densities, atomic weights, or atomic numbers. The criteria used, and whether metalloids are included, vary depending on the author and context, and arguably, the term "heavy metal" should be avoided. A heavy metal may be defined on the basis of density, atomic number, or chemical behaviour. More specific definitions have been published, none of which has been widely accepted. The definitions surveyed in this article encompass up to 96 of the 118 known chemical elements; only mercury, lead, and bismuth meet all of them. Despite this lack of agreement, the term (plural or singular) is widely used in science. A density of more than 5 g/cm is sometimes quoted as a commonly used criterion and is used in the body of this article.

The earliest known metals—common metals such as iron, copper, and tin, and precious metals such as silver, gold, and platinum—are heavy metals. From 1809 onward, light metals, such as magnesium, aluminium, and titanium, were discovered, as well as less well-known heavy metals, including gallium, thallium, and hafnium.

A noble metal is a metallic chemical element that is resistant to corrosion and is usually found in nature in its raw form. Gold, platinum, and the other platinum group metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium) are most often so classified. Silver, copper, and mercury are sometimes included as noble metals, but each of these usually occurs in nature combined with sulfur.

In more specialized fields of study and applications, the number of elements counted as noble metals can vary. In some contexts, the term is used only for copper, silver, and gold which have filled d-bands. In others, it is applied more broadly to any metallic or semimetallic element that does not react with a weak acid and give off hydrogen gas in the process. This broader set includes copper, mercury, technetium, rhenium, arsenic, antimony, bismuth, polonium, gold, the six platinum group metals, and silver.

The metals of antiquity are the seven metals which humans had identified and found use for in prehistoric times in Africa, Europe and throughout Asia: gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron, and mercury.

Zinc, arsenic, and antimony were also known during antiquity, but they were not recognised as distinct metals until later. A special case is platinum; it was known to native South Americans around the time Europe was going through classical antiquity, but was unknown to Europeans until the 18th century. Thus, at most eleven elemental metals and metalloids were known by the end of antiquity; this contrasts greatly with the situation today, with over 90 elemental metals known. Bismuth only began to be recognised as distinct around 1500 by the European and Incan civilisations. The first elemental metal with a clearly identifiable discoverer is cobalt, discovered in 1735 by Georg Brandt, by which time the Scientific Revolution was in full swing. (Even then, cobalt might have been prepared before the 13th century by alchemists roasting and reducing its ore, but, in any case, its distinct nature was not recognised.)