Since Japanese lacquer has characteristic infrared absorption bands, this can be used for identification in the absence of any foreign substance. However, films of Japanese lacquer excavated or unearthed from ancient tombs or remains are usually intimately mixed with inorganicsubstances such as ground powder or soils. Accordingly, the lacquer films should be separated from those inorganic substances prior to identification. Such inorganic substances have specific gravities greater than 2.0, whereas hardened films of Japanese lacquer have a specific gravity ranging between 1.2 and 1.3. The author showed that CCl having specific gravity of 1.63 can be used to separate Japanese lacquer films from inorganic substances and that the same separation technique can be applied to analyze unearthed ancient articles supposed to be Japanese lacquer.