We review the progress of strong earthquake motion observations in Japan since 1980 emphasizing the development of instrumentation and array deployment. The first part of this paper is concerned with the improvements of dynamic range, frequency band, data storage and telemetry used in strong motion observations. The second part discusses the precision of analog and digital recordings and the processing of strong motion records. Thirdly, the strong motion seismograph network and orgnizations for strong motion observations in Japan are briefly summarized and they are compared with those of other countries. As a future prospect of strong motion observation in Japan, we expect mobile array observations to be popular and note necessity for quick and open data exchange.
