Earthquake resistant design of quay wall is usually carried out by using pseudo-static method for Level-one earthquake ground motion. Although the method is easy to be implemented, it is not necessarily in harmony with the failure mechanism of quay walls. Therefore, it is very important to establish an earthquake resistant design method of quay walls that is both simple and precise enough for practical design. This paper presents a fundamental study as a first step to establish a simple evaluation method of the seismic performance of sheet pile quay walls with vertical pile anchorage. The proposed method employs frame model analysis and one-dimensional earthquake response analysis of ground. We found that distributed and concentrated soil spring is adequate for sheet pile and vertical pile anchorage respectively. We then examined the applicability of the proposed method by comparing the results by the proposed method and those by the two-dimensional earthquake response analysis.