2015 年 68 巻 2 号 p. 45-53
Kyoto City has experienced a number of large seismic ground motions since it was established approximately 1200 years ago. Descriptions of these shakings are recorded in written documents which have been used to investigate historic earthquake hazards. In those documents often appears that stone lanterns at major temples and shrines collapsed and suffered damages, and descriptions of such damages are used to determine that the shaking at that site was at least as severe as 5 in JMA Intensity Scale. When stone lanterns are heavily damaged during earthquakes, some of them would be removed from the site and replaced by new ones afterward, which implies that the age distribution of stone lanterns which we observe today is affected by the history of strong ground motions. We examine ages of stone lanterns at Kitano-Tenmangu Shrine, Kyoto and investigate whether the correlation between the ages of stone lanterns and historic earthquakes is evident at this site. Severe damages of stone lanterns caused by strong ground motions in 1830 and 1854 at this site are documented in the historic documents, and we are able to identify that high numbers of stone lanterns that were newly build within a few years of these earthquakes currently remain at this site. We statistically argue that ages of existing stone lanterns at Kitano-Tenmangu Shrine are affected by historical strong seismic ground motions in Kyoto, and that these stone lanterns as a group record occurrence of historic earthquakes in Kyoto.