We take great pleasure in inviting you to the Fourteenth Japan Earthquake Engineering Symposium (14JEES) to be held at Makuhari Messe International Convention Hall, Chiba, Japan during 4-6 December 2014. The Japan Earthquake Engineering Symposiums (JEESs) were held every four-years, in the mid-year of the World Conference of Earthquake Engineering (WCEE), which was held most recently in Lisbon, Portugal in September 2014. The 14JEES is organized by ten academic societies in Japan related to earthquake engineering, seismology and disaster science. The Japan Society for Earthquake Engineering (JAEE) is in charge of hosting the event.
Japan has been experienced many damaging earthquakes in its almost two-thousand years history. The largest magnitude event in its modern history is the March 11, 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake with Mw9.0. Since the 1995 Kobe earthquake with Mw6.9, we have promoted many new earthquake countermeasures to protect buildings, infrastructures and modern social systems. But the characteristics of the Mw9.0 subduction-zone event was different from the inland event. The gigantic tsunamis were generated by large sea-bottom slips and hit the northeastern Pacific coast of Japan repeatedly. Not just tsunamis and resulting Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant's accident, new lessons such as long-period seismic ground motion and wide-spread liquefaction were also acquired.

The lessons from the Tohoku-Oki earthquake should be shared by not only Japanese scientists, engineers and decision makers, but also internationally. Our lessons should be utilized for earthquake and tsunami disaster mitigation worldwide. The 14JEES will be one of the most significant and successful events in the Asia-Pacific region, which is exposed to frequent earthquakes and tsunamis. Your participation to the 14JEES is truly welcome.

Fumio Yamazaki
Chairman of the Organizing Committee