Abstract
This article provides an overview of papers collected in the special issue titled “Geotectonic Evolution of the Japanese Islands under New Paradigms of the Next Generation (Part I-III)” for international readers. Research on the geologic evolution of the Japanese Islands started from the geotectonic subdivision with definitions of elements and boundaries in the late 19th century. Traditionally, some remarkable faults, such as Median Tectonic Line (MTL), Fossa magna, and Tanakura Tectonic Line (TTL), were regarded as the most important; however, these apparent features were in fact formed during the Miocene opening of the Japan Sea, whereas the major structures of Japan were made by the Pacific-type orogenies throughout the Phanerozoic after the initiation of subduction at 520 Ma (the Cambrian).
Marine geophysicists have realized that the formation of accretionary complex (AC) along modern active subduction zones is rather exceptional; instead, tectonic erosion takes place dominantly. The estimated addition rate of juvenile arc crust (composed of tonalite–tronjemite–granodiorite suite; TTG) is negative at present for the entire globe, i.e., the total volume of the continental crust is currently decreasing. This indicates that tectonic erosion must also have occurred effectively in the past, and that its geological remnants need to be investigated carefully. A possible proxy geologic body for ancient tectonic erosion is a serpentinite mélange, which often includes calc-alkaline volcanics and coeval high-P/T blueschists within serpentinite matrices as shown in the geology of Japan. The large-scale shortening of a fore-arc crust can occur solely due to tectonic erosion, which may involve more than 150 km-wide areas of missing rocks between volcanic arc and trench. The sporadic occurrence of tectonic blocks of older (520-150 Ma)TTG rocks in serpentinite mélange indicates that four arc crusts, out of the five made by Pacific-type orogeny in Japan during the past 500 million years, have already been consumed.
The Pacific-type orogeny was revisited after recent critical discoveries of; (1) orogenic core of high-P/T regional metamorphic belt as a thin (< 2 km) solid high-T intrusion, bounded on the top and bottom by a paired fault; (2) rapid increase of 200-300 km-wide TTG belt formed by slab-melting; (3) these culminated with an approaching mid-oceanic ridge, associated with large-scale tectonic erosion; and (4) formation of an AC after ridge subduction and doming up of a sandwiched set of high-P belt and accretionary belt below and above. The Pacific-type orogeny has been ignored since the “terrane plague”; however, Pacific-type orogeny dominated to increase the TTG crust leading to the births of continents and supercontinent by 1.8 Ga. The extensive tectonic erosion and arc subduction through time, suggesting 10 times more TTG materials, enriched with radiogenic elements, floated at the bottom of the mantle transition zone, which generated heat to warm up the mantle up to 200 K within 100 million years in the Archean, and to 100 K in the Phanerozoic. Subducted TTG and presence of second continents in the mid-mantle may explain more general aspects of mantle dynamics, and the concept may become a frontier of solid Earth science in the 21st century.
From the viewpoint of the history of science, the previous geological studies in Japan since the Meiji Era are also summarized briefly, with special reference to the orogeny, tectonics, and geotectonic subdivision of the Japanese Islands.
