Elekiter

thumb|The erekiteru (replica) exhibited in the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo, Japan upright=1.5|thumb|The erekiteru being demonstrated thumb|upright=1.5|A wikt:curio|curio shop demonstrating and selling an erekiteru. The sign at the entrance says "Newest curiosities from foreign countries". The elekiteru or is the Japanese name for a type of generator of static electricity used for electric experiments in the 18th century. In Japan, Hiraga Gennai presented his own erekiteru in 1776, derived from an erekiteru from Holland. The erekiteru consists of a small box that uses the power of friction to generate electricity and store it.

The erekiteru relied on the various Western experiments with static electricity during the 18th century, which depended on the discovery that electricity could be generated through friction, and on the invention of the Leyden jar in the 1740s, as a convenient means to store static electricity in rather large quantities. Hiraga Gennai acquired an erekiteru from the Netherlands during his second trip to Nagasaki in 1770, and made a formal demonstration of his erekiteru in 1776.