We first report the recent experiment on the232Th(40Ar,α3n)265[106] reaction carried out at RIKEN to test the usefulness of the (HI,αχn)-type reaction for the production of very heavy elements. Reaction residues recoiling out of a thin ThO2 target bombarded with 5.2 MeV/u40Ar beam were separated from the beam by using a gas-filled recoil separator and implanted onto a two-dimensionally position-sensitive solid-state detector placed at the focal plane of the separator. The preliminary results of the analysis show that the cross section of the above reaction is around 1 nb, being about four times larger than that of the248Cm(22Ne,5n)265[106] reaction reported in the literature. Secondly, we discuss briefly the merits and demerits of the use of a neutron-rich beam for the production of superheavy elements, in which we stress the possibility that the demerit of weak secondary-beam intensity is nearly cancelled out by the increase of the survival probability with the increase of the neutron number of the compound nucleus and also by the possible enhancement of near-barrier fusion.