1948 Fukui (Japan) Earthquake Archive:

In Memory of Prof. Masayuki Kikuchi (1948-2004)


1948 6/28 7:13 UTC 36.50N 136.00E  10km           Mw=6.8, Fukui, Japan

The death toll of this earthquake was over 3,700.  This earthquake has been studied by many Japanese seismologists, especially by the late Prof. Masayuki Kikuchi.

We urge scientists and engineers who have studied this earthquake to contribute their materials for this archive. 
Please contact William H. K. Lee at: lee@usgs.gov (office), or whklee@ix.netcom.com (home).

Endowment Donor: Hiroo Kanamori (for providing fund to scan the 1948 Fukui earthquake seismograms).                            
Contributors: William H. K. Lee.


1. Seismograms of the 1948 Fukui (Japan) Earthquake:     Seismograms of this earthquake from two publications (Central Meteorological Observatory, 1948) and (Office of the Engineer, 1949) were scanned at 600 dpi resolution.  Additional seismograms will be scanned in the future, because we have as yet to develop a practical method to scan historical seismograms on microfilm.

view directory of compressed tif images (gzip files)

2. Selected Information about the 1948 Fukui Earthquake now Online:      Summary of 1948 Fukui Earthquake: A two-page summary from the “Summary of Scientific Data of Major Earthquakes in Japan 1872-1972”, Quick Research Report, No. 9, p. 88-89, Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo, 1973. [in Japanese with some English captions].      Ando and Irikura (1999). Introduction to the Special Issue of the M 7.1 1948 Fukui Earthquake,             J. Seism. Soc. Japan, vol. 52, no. 1, p. 109-110. [in Japanese].      Abstracts of the 8 Research Articles in the Special Issue of the M 7.1 1948 Fukui Earthquake,             Source: J. Seism. Soc. Japan, vol. 52, no. 1, p. 111-197. [in English].      Kojima and Arai (1999). “Literature List Relative to the 1948 Fukui Earthquake”,             J. Seism. Soc. Japan, vol. 52, no. 1, p. 213-218. [in Japanese].      Arai and Kojima (1999). Damage from the 1948 Fukui Earthquake             Source: J. Seism. Soc. Japan, vol. 52, no. 1, p. 219-227. [in Japanese].

3. References:
Central Meteorological Observatory  (1948). “Report on the Investigations of the Fukui Earthquake of June 28, 1948”, Special issue of the Earthquake Report Volume 14, Central Meteorological Observatory. [in Japanese].
Office of the Engineer (1949). “The Fukui Earthquake, Hokuriku Region, Japan, 28 June 1948”, 2 volumes prepared by the Office of the Engineer, General Headquarters, Far East Command, February, 1949.
Zisin Special Issue (1999). “Special Issue of the M7.1 1948 Fukui Earthquake”, J. Seism. Soc. Japan, vol. 52, no. 1, p. 109-197, and p. 213-227. This Special Issue contains an Introduction [in Japanese], 8 research articles [in Japanese with English Abstracts], and two "Materials" articles [in Japanese]. 

4. A Brief Note about Masayuki Kikuchi (1948-2004)     Masayuki Kikuchi was educated at the University of Tokyo: B.Sc. (1970), M.Sc. (1972), and D.Sc. (1976), all in Geophysics.  He served as a Research Associate, Yokohama City University (1973-83); Research Fellow, Northwestern University (1979-80); Research Associate, California Institute of Technology (1980-81); Associate Professor, Yokohama City University (1983-88); Professor, Yokohama City University (1988-96); and Professor, Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo (1996-2004).       Please click: Biographical Sketch for: Masayuki Kikuchi a 1-page bio-summary written by Prof. Kikuchi himself for the “International Handbook of Earthquake and Engineering Seismology”,
edited by W.H.K. Lee, H. Kanamori, P.C. Jennings, and C. Kisslinger, Part B, p. 1889, Academic Press, San Diego, 2003.   

(Last Updated: October 14, 2004)