Recent Studies on the Strong Ground Motions from the 1923 Kanto Earthquake and Its Aftershocks: Analyses of Data of Seismic Records, Damage and Descriptions of Personal Experiences

The 1923 Kanto earthquake (M=7.9) was one of the most destructive earthquakes to occur in Japan. Many studies on seismology and earthquake engineering have been carried put for this earthquake. In the last decade, investigations of source process and strong ground motions have been especially advanced. This paper reviewed the results of these studies. Many seismic records and descriptions of personal experiences in Japan have been revealed during the decade, which are useful for elucidating the source process and the characteristics of strong ground motions. It was found that the main shock involved two big sub-events, whose locations were about 40 km distant on the fault plane, which occurred with time interval of 10 to 15 s after the initial small rupture duration of 3 to 5 s. This complex faulting process of the main shock caused regional variations of strong ground motions in the near source region