We performed a damage survey of temples and shrines near the source region of the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki earthquake to estimate the distribution of strong ground motions. We constructed a function to estimate peak ground velocity from the damage rank of main hall of temples and shrines, and estimated the PGV distribution in the source region. From our results, the PGV in the most of the Kashiwazaki basin exceeds 100cm/s. This PGV distribution agrees with the PGV estimated from the attenuation relationship and surface soil amplification. The conventional estimation method using the ratio of overturned tombstones underestimates the PGV in the basin.
