Recent Landslides
Landslides (2011) 8:339–342 Toyohiko Miyagi I Daisuke Higaki I Hiroshi Yagi I Shoji Doshida I Noriyuki Chiba I Jun
DOI 10.1007/s10346-011-0281-9 Umemura I Go Satoh
Received: 5 July 2011
Accepted: 12 July 2011
Published online: 26 July 2011 Reconnaissance report on landslide disasters in northeast
© Springer-Verlag 2011
Japan following the M 9 Tōhoku earthquake
Abstract An earthquake of Mw 9.0 struck the Pacific coast in
northeast Japan on March 11, 2011 and was followed by a
hugely damaging tsunami along 500km of the Japanese coast-
line. An inland aftershock of M. 7.0 occurred on April 11;
during which, surface fault ruptures appeared on land. A large
variety of landslide disasters resulted from these earthquakes
in various parts of northeastern Honshu, Japan. The full extent
of the landslides is still being determined. This brief report
introduces some of the landslide phenomena so far inves-
tigated by the Japanese Landslide Society. These are (1) failure
of a water reservoir embankment dam in Sukagawa, Fukush-
ima prefecture, (2) landslides and surface seismic fault rupture
from the April 11 aftershock in Iwaki, Fukushima, (3) a
concentration of surface failures at Matsushima Bay in Miyagi
prefecture, and (4) small landslides on modified slopes in
residential areas around Sendai city.
Keywords Tōhoku Earthquake . Great East Japan Earthquake .
Landslide disaster . Damburst flood . Land reclamation .
Tsunami . Surface seismic fault rupture . Japan
Introduction
The Mw 9.0 Tōhoku earthquake (or Great East Japan Earthquake)
which struck off the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011 was the
strongest earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth
largest anywhere in the last century. After the main shock,
enormous devastating tsunami waves hit the Pacific coast between
Kanto and Tōhoku districts and caused catastrophic damage to
most of the eastern coast of Japan. The tsunami, which arrived
between 30 min and 1 h after the main shock, brought immense
destruction and killed more than 24,000 people. This powerful
earthquake also triggered landslides of various types and scales
along the eastern side of northern Japan. Figure 1 shows a
preliminary map of the distribution of damaging landslides. A
distinctive feature is the tendency of landslide disasters to be
concentrated in certain areas, including the locations of inland
aftershocks, such as the Iwaki and Nagano areas, and in areas
with bedrock characteristics such as brittle rocks, as in the
Matsushima area. There were also landslides in artificial materi-
als, causing the destruction of the embankment dam of a water
reservoir and small landslides in a land reclamation area. The
landslides showed some very remarkable features from this
earthquake. A full picture of the extent of the landslide disasters,
however, is still not clear. Herein, the Japanese Landslide Society
research group presents their reconnaissance report of the
landslide disasters.
Collapse of the embankment dam of the Fujinuma water reservoir
The most serious landslide disaster caused by the main shock
occurred at Fujinuma water reservoir in Sukagawa city, Fukush-
ima prefecture, where an embankment dam was destroyed. This is
the first water reservoir damburst flood to occur in Japan (Fig. 2).
The outburst killed eight people and destroyed 19 houses. The
Fujinuma water reservoir was built in 1949 and was 20 ha in area,
contained by an earth embankment that was 17.5 m high and
133 m long. The reservoir stored 99,000 m3 of water and provided
irrigation for 873 ha of paddies.
The embankment was completely destroyed by a combina-
tion of an initial landslide and erosion in the ensuing flood.
Details of the destruction process still need to be clarified by
further inspection and simulation. We report the observations
from the emergency field investigation.
Based on geomorphic interpretation, an initial landslide
apparently occurred at the central part of the embankment.
The water level appears to have slightly decreased at the
moment of the earthquake. Two thirds of the dam body was
destroyed in the initial failure. The reservoir water thus
discharged in a short amount of time, and most of the original
landslide was washed away. Downstream of the dam, many trees
were destroyed by this discharge, with many victims killed in the
initial tree-laden mud flow.
Secondary destruction of the dam body following the initial
discharge was confirmed by the investigation. After the land-
slide, a channel 10 m deep and 20 m wide was cut by flood
erosion. It caused a chain reaction of further failures to occur in
the remains of the embankment.
Landslides in natural slopes
Various types of landslides such as surface failures, shallow
landslides, deep failures, deep-seated landslides, and rock falls
occurred in coastal and inland areas between northern Kanto
and the Tōhoku district. However, their number and size were
not great. The area where the seismic intensity was >5 was
about 100×400 km. Despite the severe shaking over a long
period, the number of disastrous landslides was relatively
small. In contrast, in the 2008 Iwate–Miyagi inland earthquake,
more than 3,000 landslides occurred within a small 10×40 km
area. As shown in Fig. 1, there are some areas where many
landslides occurred—Iwaki and Sukagawa cities of Fukushima
prefecture, northern Nagano prefecture, Sendai city, and
Matsushima Bay of Miyagi prefecture.
Three surface fault rupture traces appeared during the
inland aftershock on April 11 (Fig. 3). Numerous slightly larger-
scale deep-seated landslides and deep slope failures occurred
in Iwaki city of southeastern Fukushima prefecture in the
aftershock of April 11.
The Kamikamado landslide (Fig. 4) was the largest of these
many landslides. This landslide is 200 m wide, 200 m long, and 23 m
thick. The toe of the landslide body buries a prefectural road and two
houses in the lower part of the landslide. The landslide body is
divided into several huge blocks by a large graben, 40 m wide, in the
upper part of the landslide.
Landslides 8 & (2011) 339
 Recent Landslides

Fig. 1 Distribution of major landslides in the March 11, 2011, Tōhoku earthquake
Fig. 2 Failure of the dam embankment of the Fujinuma water reservoir. a Remains of
the crest of the embankment—a landslide destroyed two thirds of the embankment
Behind the main displaced area of the landslide, there are at the moment of the main shock. b After the landslide, a large volume of reservoir
many cracks and humps across the ridge line of the hill. Thus, water spilled out, eroding the left bank and scouring the channel
the earthquake may have expanded the size of a pre-existing
landslide.
The landslide’s morphology is similar to that of the
Aratozawa landslide (Miyagi et al. 2011) caused by the 2008
Iwate–Miyagi earthquake. Based on the microlandform features
and the geological structure, the type of movement is a deep-
seated block glide or spread landslide. The slip surface is
within mudstone and appears to be very gentle (Satoh et al.
2011).
The Shionohira surface seismic fault rupture (Fig. 3)
indicates 1.25 m of vertical displacement in the Kariya area in
the western part of Iwaki city, Fukushima prefecture. This fault
is a north–south normal fault and dips 80–90° to the west. Its
sense of displacement is slightly right lateral.
The existence of this normal fault has been known,
however, it was assumed that it could not cause an earthquake
of M.7 class. Although there is the Fukushima nuclear power
plant, specific research has not been conducted on this fault
because it was not considered hazardous. Fig. 3 Shionohira surface seismic fault rupture. a A clear linear fault scarp
Extensive slope failures and landslides occurred on the stretches through the paddy fields. b At a, a small pond has formed as vertical
west side of this fault. The Kaiya slope failure is 160 m high displacement dammed the local drainage. From b to c, the fault displacement can
with a maximum width of 50 m (Fig. 5). Three victims have be traced as a straight and narrow line of forest destruction across the mountain

340 Landslides 8 & (2011)

Fig. 4 Kamikamado landslide. The main scarp of the landslide stretches behind
the ridge between arrows a to b23
been confirmed from this landslide. The slope failure was
generated in a steep slope with an inclination of 30–40°
consisting of slightly weathered crystalline schist. The upper
third part of the collapse had cut deeply into the bedrock. The
failure depth is 3–5 m and it is considered to be deep slope
failure. The rock waste produced by the collapse generated
mudflows, and a house was buried by the collapse.
Surface landslides and rock falls on the islands of Matsushima Bay
Matsushima Bay is a famous scenic area located northeast of
Sendai city. The small bay of about 80 km2 is dotted with
about 250 islets. The earthquake caused slope collapse and
Fig. 5 Kaiya landslide
Fig. 6 Distribution of landslides in the Matsushima Bay area. This is the area with
the largest number of localized landslides. Almost of all of slopes of the islands
were swept by the tsunami
landslides at 150 or more places on these islets (Fig. 6). The
forms of the islets have been changed and the scenery greatly
spoiled by the landslides. On the Urato islands, where people
live, houses were badly damaged by the slope failures at the
time the earthquake occurred. About 1 h later, the seaside
colonies were destroyed by the tsunami, which measured over
8 m in height (Fig. 7).
The islets in Matsushima Bay mainly consist of two kinds
of bedrock—the Otsuka layers and the Matsushima tuff layer
of the upper Miocene. The Otsuka layer consists of alternating
layers of tuffaceous sandstone and tuffaceous siltstone, with a
well-developed joint system. On the other hand, the Matsush-
ima tuff is a typical pumice tuff rock and on the whole lacks
massive cracks. Because of its brittle structure, 90% of the
landslides are distributed in the Otsuka layer. Many of these
landslides are surface collapses with thicknesses of 1–3 m.
Although rare, about ten large-scale rock falls occurred in the
Matsushima tuff.
Fig. 7 Landslides and tsunami damage on Sabusawa Island, Matsushima. Small
arrows show landslide failures just behind the houses, the large arrow shows
the main direction of the tsunami
Landslides 8 & (2011) 341
 Recent Landslides
Fig. 8 Landslides at land reclamation sites in residential areas. a Typical slumping
retaining-wall failure, b a more deep-seated slope failure
Landslides on artificial slopes
Sendai is a central city and lies close to the epicenter of the
Tōhoku Earthquake. Sendai and its surrounding area also lead
Japan in the scale of its artificial alteration of landform features.
Beginning with the construction of an urbanized area of 10 km in
the 1960s, 70% of the steep hillslopes were flattened by 1990 to use
as residential estates. Such land alteration is now still spreading
outward in a circle. Although the residential estate was made
artificially flat, it was by cutting and filling; and the boundary
between these is quite intricate.
In this earthquake, many landslides were small in size. A
considerable number of them occurred in places with artificial
342 Landslides 8 & (2011)
landfill where cut and fill boundaries occurred on the artificial
land. In Sendai city alone, there are more than 2,000 landslides
and hazardous slopes, and a few hundred residents have been told
to evacuate from their homes. However, the total number of the
disastrous small landslides has not been clarified yet.
The Japanese Landslide Society has been carrying out a
project to evaluate the strength of landfill areas of artificial
ground in the Sendai area. The project includes: (1) building a
database of the cut and landfill conditions of about 50 residential
areas in Sendai, (2) determining and classifying the material
properties of the landfill materials, (3) establishing a geological
model of the landfill areas based on a 5-m grid of columns, and
(4) using three-dimensional stability analysis to calculate the
factor of safety of each column by the RBSM method. Using these
methods, a distribution map of the landslide potential of the
landfill areas was produced. The first test of the model was carried
out using landslides in the Takamachi residential area that
occurred during the Mid Niigata earthquake in 2004 (Hamasaki
et al. 2007). There was good agreement between the model and
the actual land deformation.
Also in this earthquake, very good correspondence was seen
between the areas likely to generate landslides and the landslides
generated by the 2011 earthquakes. Figure 8 shows examples of a
residential area that was developed in the hills of the western part of
Sendai. Each of the three small landslides generated in this
residential area had occurred on landfill sites designated as high risk.
References
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T. Miyagi ()) : D. Higaki : H. Yagi : S. Doshida : N. Chiba : J. Umemura :
G. Satoh
Tōhoku Gakuin University,
Tōhoku, Japan
e-mail: miyagi@izcc.tohoku-gakuin.ac.jp