A strictly anaerobic, mesophilic and chitinolytic bacterial strain, M-21, was isolated from a soil sample collected from Mie University campus and identified as Clostridium paraputrificum based on morphological and physiological characteristics, and 16S rRNA sequence analysis. C. paraputrificum M-21 utilized chitin and N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (GlcNAc), a constituent monosaccharide of chitin, to produce a large amount of gas along with acetic acid and propionic acid as major fermentation products. Hydrogen and carbon dioxide accounted for 65% and 35% of the gas evolved, respectively. The conditions for ii batch culture of C. paraputrificum, including pH of the medium, incubation temperature and agitation speed, were optimized for hydrogen production with GlcNAc as the carbon source. The bacterium grew rapidly on GlcNAc with a doubling time of around 30 min, and produced hydrogen gas with a yield of 1.9 mol H-2/mol GlcNAc under the following cultivation conditions: initial medium pH of 6.5, incubation temperature of 45 degrees C, agitation speed of 250 rpm, and working volume of 50% of the fermenter. The dry cell weight harvested from this culture was 2.0 g/l.