Research on construction of a full-text database of all historical earthquake documents in the Japanese Ancient and Medieval ages and on composition of an international-standard seismic intensity database

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In Japan, 'Zotei Dai-Nihon Jishin Shiryo (Collection of Historical Documents on Earthquakes in Japan, Enlarged and Revised Edition)' edited by Musha (1941, 1943, 1951) and 'Shinshu Nihon Jishin Shiryo (Historical Documents on Earthquakes in Japan, New Collection)' edited by Usami and his colleagues (1981-1994), 25 volumes in all, have comprised nvaluable fundamental data for historical seismology, as collections of all Japan's known historical earthquake records clipped from various historical sources since around the 6th century. However, they contain rather many low-quality materials that produce errors and fictitious (fake) earthquakes, and are too huge volumes, just in printed format, to be thoroughly utilized. In order to improve this situation fundamentally, we have carried out a research project of emending and databasing all historical earthquake documents in the Ancient and Medieval ages (up to ca. A.D. 1600), which has been interdisciplinary collaboration among earth scientists, historians and information scientists. We have been critically examining all the historical documents in the existing collections, selecting them, carefully emending every text, and composing a re-edited collection in digital form. Furthermore, we have tried to compose a seismic intensity database compatible with the Intensity Data Points (IDP) prevailing in Europe. The XML (eXtensible Markup Language) has been introduced for mark-upping documents, and the alpha-version of a full-text database of historical earthquake documents has been constructed. Owing to this database, various problems have been clarified concerning existing collections of historical earthquake documents. The project is now going on as the second phase under the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) in the term of 2006-2007.