National legislation within Japan has increased the need for the development of new process technologies that will utilize waste wood materials. In order to generate some fundamental data with respect to the possible injection of such materials into blast furnaces, a study has been made of the decomposition and gasification reactions that take place when biomass material, in this case Japanese cypress chips, are exposed to temperatures between 1673 and 2073K using a high frequency induction furnace. The relative amounts of gas, char and tar were determined as well as the concentration of the various species present in the gas phase. The results obtained from gas analysis were in good agreement with values calculated from thermodynamic equilibria.