The belt boundary thrust within the Cretaceous–Neogene accretionary complex of the Shimanto Belt, southwestern Japan, extends for more than ~ 1 000 km along the Japanese islands. A common understanding of the origin of the thrust is that it is an out of sequence thrust as a result of continuous accretion since the late Cretaceous and there is a kinematic reason for its maintaining a critically tapered wedge. The timing of the...

Melt‐origin pseudotachylyte is the most reliable seismogenic fault rock. It is commonly believed that pseudotachylyte generation is rare in the plate subduction zone where interstitial fluids are abundant and can trigger dynamic fault‐weakening mechanisms such as thermal pressurization. Some recent studies, however, have discovered pseudotachylyte‐bearing faults in exhumed ancient accretionary complexes, indicating that fricti...

Laboratory measurements for compressional and shear wave velocities ( V p and V s, respectively) and porosity were conducted with core samples from the N obeoka T hrust D rilling P roject ( NOBELL ) under controlled effective pressure (5–65 MPa at 5 MPa intervals) and wet conditions. Samples were classified according to deformation texture as phyllite, foliated cataclasite, or non‐foliated cataclasite. Measured values of V p,...

The N obeoka T hrust, an ancient megasplay fault in the S himanto B elt, southwestern J apan, contains fault rocks from the seismogenic zone, providing an accessible analog of active megasplay faults in deep subduction settings. In this study, the paleostress along the N obeoka T hrust was analyzed using multiple inversion techniques, including k ‐means clustering of fault datasets acquired from drillcores that intersected the...