Divers demonstrated that thionyl chloride was instead  produced by a secondary reaction between sulphur dioxide and phosphorus pentachloride. It was in the course of this work, on 24 November 1884, that Divers lost vision in his right eye as he was badly cut by pieces of glass resulting from the sudden bursting of the bottle with phosphorus oxychloride. Chemistry of sulfonated nitrogen compounds was the subject of most attention for Divers while staying in Japan. In collaboration with Haga, he showed that the numerous complex acids belonging to this group of compounds are the products of the reaction between sulphurous and nitrous acids, the base being essential only in so far as it protects the products of the reaction against hydrolysis, and that, contrary to the statements of previous workers, normal sulfites and nitrites have no action on each other. Divers and Haga further showed that the primary product of the reaction between sulphurous and nitrous acids is always hydroxylaminedisulfonic acid and nothing else. Divers was pre-eminently an experimental chemist and rarely occupied with the theoretical study of chemical questions. He greatly encouraged the spirit of experimental research among his pupils including Jōkichi Takamine, who was the first to prepare pure adrenaline, and Masataka Ogawa who discovered "nipponium" (later found to be rhenium). By advice of Divers, M. Chikashige of the Kyoto Imperial University studied the atomic weight of Japanese tellurium in 1896, in the hope that this tellurium, which contrary to the European tellurium is associated with sulphur and not with any heavy metal, might yield an atomic weight in conformity with the periodic table. No difference was observed, however. Divers had two great misfortunes while staying in Japan. One was the sudden death of his son Frederic, which occurred in China, where he was in the service of the Maritime Customs. The other was death, in Tokyo in 1897, of his wife, Margaret Theresa Fitzgerald, whom he married in 1865. After this loss, Divers never seemed to be in the best of spirits, and this fact, combined with his advancing age and isolation, led him to return to England in 1899. He was much respected in Japan, particularly by Itō Hirobumi, who, in the early days of the Engineering College, was the Minister of Public Works, and thus came in frequent contact with Divers. The contribution of Divers to education was recognised by the Japanese government, which, in 1886, conferred upon him the Order of the Rising Sun of the Third Class, in 1898, the Order of the Sacred Treasure of the Second Class.