Faculty of Education, Shizuoka University, 836 Oya, Shizuoka 422-8529, Japan
Fax: +81-54-238-4635
E-mail:
My homepage
Homepage of the working group on historical volcanology based on ancient-modern literature in Japan
Japanese version is here.
Last modified: May 6, 1999.
What we did?
In Japan, numerous documents, which include descriptions about
volcanic and possible volcanic activities, were found and are
still being found in various historical literatures, which were
written during the 6th century to the recent time. Such descriptions
have been collected and interpreted since the end of the 19th
century by volcanologists and several databooks were published
in the early half of the 20th century. However, most of all the
Japanese volcanologists did not know and still do not know how
to evaluate the reliability of historical documents, which often
include many mistakes, falsehoods, and inaccurate descriptions.
Consequently, many of the documents have been regarded as facts
and thus the present list of the historical eruptions in Japan
includes numerous "ghost eruptions" and several "ghost
active volcanoes".
Such a situation is not good for the development of volcanology
and disaster prevention in Japan. Thus, we started to reevaluate
all of the historical descriptions about volcanic activities using
the knowledge and know-how, which have been collected by the historians
and historical seismologists in Japan, and to revise the eruptive
history of each volcano or each eruption.
Our publications
We issued a bimonthly newsletter "Rekishi Funka (Historical
Eruptions)" (sorry, written in Japanese), which reports a
discovery or re-discoverty of historical descriptions about volcanic
and possible volcanic activities, an interpretation or re-interpretation
of them, and an introduction of knowledge or know-how for evaluating
the reliability of historical documents, etc.
Moreover, in 1998, we published a special issue of Bulletin of
the Volcanological Society of Japan as a final
report of activities of the WGHVJ.
Representatives
Any question or comment is always welcome to the following representatives
of the WGHVJ.
Masato Koyama
Faculty of Education, Shizuoka University, 836 Oya, Shizuoka 422-8529,
Japan
Fax: +81-54-238-4635
E-mail:
My homepage
Ryusuke Imura
Department of Geological Sciences, Kagoshima University, 1-21-35
Korimoto, Kagoshima 890-0065, Japan
Fax: +81-99-259-4720
Katsuhiko Ishibashi
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kobe University, 1-1
Rokkodai, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan
Fax: +81-78-803-0490